If you feel like ripping out your EZ-Pass after learning the MTA has failed to collect over $5.1 billion in unpaid MTA tolls and fees the past four years, we don’t blame you.
Especially since the agency’s political overlords have resorted to a new toll, the “congestion pricing” scheme, to make up the difference.
After stonewalling our reporters for a week, the MTA is rushing to explain things aren’t that bad, but it did in fact cite the $5.1 billion figure as it looked to hire bill collectors.
And it’ll need them, since the loss will surely grow with the new congestion-pricing tolls — which look unlikely to bring in as much as the agency loses to toll-evaders.
It’s hard to think of a more fundamental breach of the social contract: The MTA — or, rather, its political masters in Albany — is charging the law-abiding more because it’s unable to collect its due cut from scofflaws.
And so encouraging a vicious cycle in which ever more folks look to evade all tolls.
At issue is failed collections since the MTA went for cashless tolling on its bridges and tunnels: License-plate readers are supposed to collect the info for vehicles lacking EZ-Pass to allow billing-by-mail.
But obscured plates, or paper ones, frustrate the readers, while most other states won’t enforce New York tolls by penalizing their residents.
As for the MTA’s damage control: Its bridges-and-tunnels chief assures The Post that 96% of tolls are collected each year, and roughly half of unpaid tolls get collected eventually — though we haven’t seen numbers on how much it costs to collect from the deadbeats.
And none of it gets away from the fact that the agency is quietly advertising a need to collect unpaid bills that will soon approach $2 billion a year.
Again, the MTA is ultimately a creature of its masters in Albany, so don’t take out all your anger on CEO Janno Lieber and his minions.
In the end, it’s the politicians who run state government who are once again slamming the law-abiding rather than making the law-breakers pay.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
