Scuttle the scofflaws
Before raising tolls on the rest of us, New York needs to crack down on drivers who evade paying their share.
At the start of the year, the cost of tolls on the New York Thruway increased by 5%. Another toll hike is scheduled for the start of 2027.
Well, what can you do? The cost of just about everything goes up and up, especially during recent years of high inflation. The state Thruway Authority has bills, employees to pay and 570 miles of roadway to maintain. It needs the money. Right?
Sure — but there’s more to the story.
Last year, an audit by state Comptroller Tom Dinapoli found the Thruway Authority is leaving hundreds of millions of dollars behind by failing to crack down on out-of-state drivers who refuse to pay New York’s tolls. In many cases, drivers from New Jersey or Connecticut, especially, evade paying without consequences.
It isn’t just out-of-state drivers at fault. As the Times Union’s Raga Justin recently reported, New York officials are concerned by a rising tide of toll evasion, with a small percentage of drivers going to outlandish lengths to avoid electronic license readers. Some, for example, are said to be using devices such as remotecontrolled shutters or magnetic leaves that shield plates from Thruway Authority cameras.
Tempting as it is to credit their creativity, those and more mundane efforts at toll evasion — including scratching off digits or using unregistered plates — represent serious fraud that is costing the state and the Thruway Authority untold millions in lost revenue.
The end result is obvious: The majority of us end up paying more because of the people who cheat.
Crack down on tolldodgers. The Legislature needs to enact stricter penalties for toll evasion and fraudulent registrations. As Ms. Justin noted, proposals now being considered would increase the criminal penalty for toll violations, increase the fine for obstructed plates, and allow police to arrest drivers who use mechanical or electronic devices to perpetrate license plate fraud.
Those are all good places to start. They must be coupled with serious efforts to crack down on out-of-state violators taking advantage of what can only be described as Thruway Authority laziness. Consider: Mr. Dinapoli’s audit found that despite a reciprocity agreement with Massachusetts, the authority had not bothered to seek the suspension of any of that state’s nearly 28,000 license plates carrying fees and fines in New York.
With an effort that sluggish, how can the Thruway Authority justify asking New York drivers to pay more? As we’ve said before, the authority’s officials should not seek to suck additional revenue from drivers who pay while doing far too little to collect from those who don’t.
Of course, it would be wonderful if toll cheats simply stopped cheating — if they realized that the responsibility to maintain New York’s roads is a shared concern, if they put that creativity into more productive places, if they embraced lives of automotive honesty and rectitude.
But here in the real world, New York must get serious about collecting from the evaders. Let’s scuttle the scofflaws.