GAO Launches Inquiry of Northeast Toll Increases
This story appears in the July 30 print edition of Transport Topics.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has notified four interstate tolling authorities in New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania that it has launched an inquiry into how they decide to raise tolls and how they spend the money.
The GAO confirmed that notices recently went to the agencies saying GAO would be requesting information and meeting with their staffs.
“Recent toll increases on some bridges have raised questions about whether transportation authorities are remaining accountable to their congressionally approved compact,” said GAO spokesman Ned Griffith.
All four tolling agencies operate under bi-state compacts authorized by Congress.
One of the toll agencies, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, operates the tunnels and bridges that cross the Hudson River. Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said the authority is cooperating with the GAO.
The other three operate more than two dozen bridges that span the Delaware River to connect New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Given recent state audits showing that the authorities don’t always act in the public’s best interest, the GAO inquiry is “necessary and appropriate,” said Darrin Roth, director of highway operations for American Trucking Associations.
ATA believes “federal oversight, and in some cases, federal intervention, is necessary to ensure that motorists are protected from exorbitant rate increases, questionable spending decisions and a lack of transparency,” Roth said.
Steep toll increases im-posed last summer by the New York-New Jersey port authority led to the GAO inquiry.Under the new rate schedule effective last September, by 2015 a 5-axle truck will pay $90 to cross the Hudson from New Jersey to Manhattan, up from $40 a year ago.
Car drivers also were subject to steep new tolls, which led to an AAA lawsuit that seeks to reverse them (10-10, p. 4).
The New Jersey Motor Truck Association “begged” New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) to request the GAO inquiry of the authorities, said NJMTA executive director Gail Toth.
“They’re all little fiefdoms; they’re all out of control, and they’re all asking for excessive toll increases and . . . misspending our money,” Toth said.
In March, Lautenberg wrote the GAO, saying that public concerns over the toll rates “illustrate the importance of ensuring that interstate compacts remain accountable” to the terms under which Congress established them.
Besides the New York-New Jersey port authority, the GAO will look at the Delaware River Port Authority, which operates the four tolled bridges linking southern New Jersey to the Philadelphia metropolitan area: the Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Commodore Barry and Betsy Ross bridges.
In March, New Jersey State Comptroller Matthew Boxer completed a report on that authority and said, “In nearly every area we looked at, we found people who treated the DRPA like a personal ATM, from DRPA commissioners to private vendors to community organizations.”
Boxer also said that the authority already had begun addressing some of those problems.
Tim Ireland, DRPA’s director of communications, told Transport Topics, “We intend to accommodate the GAO in any way we possibly can, and we look forward to their interest.”
Ireland also said the GAO indicated it wants “to talk about the deliberations leading up to toll increases” and what things the bi-state compact agencies do to “promote transparency.”
The third tolling agency in the GAO study is the Delaware River and Bay Authority, which operates the Delaware Memorial Bridge between Delaware and New Jersey.
The fourth toll authority subject to the GAO inquiry is the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, which operates 20 bridges — seven of them tolled — linking New Jersey and Pennsylvania from north of Philadelphia to the New York state line.
The GAO letter asked “staff to assist them . . . we intend to be cooperative,” said commission spokesman Joe Donnelly.
Three commission bridges carry traffic across the river for interstate highways 78, 80 and 95.
The interstate authorities may have attracted federal attention, but they’re not the only tolling entities coming under public criticism.
The New York State Thruway Authority announced in May it wants to raise tolls 45% on trucks only — a move called “inexcusable” by American Trucking Associations and several other trade groups, from manufacturers to farmers and foresters.
In a July 24 letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), the trade groups said the toll proposal does “not address the long and well-documented history of financial mismanagement” at the authority that led to “this ill-conceived plan to mandate a bailout from the trucking industry” and business sectors that rely on trucks.
Meanwhile, in Maine, the state’s turnpike authority is proposing toll increases that could see the toll on a 5-axle truck rise almost 50% — from $19.20 to $28.70.
“The reason for additional revenue is understandable,” said Brian Parke, president of the Maine Motor Transport Association. “They have to pay off bonds, and they have financial obligations that we understand.”
But truckers are working with the turnpike in an effort to reduce the increase and, perhaps, get it phased in, so carriers have time to adjust shipping contracts.
In Virginia, meanwhile, ATA, the Virginia Trucking Association and Natso, which represents truck stop operators, announced July 23 that they are helping organize a grassroots campaign against a plan by Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) to toll Interstate 95.
Virginia and North Carolina have been accepted into a federal pilot program under which they will apply for federal permission to toll I-95.
In Chicago, the Reason Foundation think tank unveiled a $52 billion proposal on July 19 to put tolls on nearly a dozen roads and tunnels in Chicago.
But in Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal (R) announced the same day he will end tolling on Georgia State Route 400 next year because the debt incurred against the toll revenues is almost paid.
