N.Y. Thruway Board Cancels Two Meetings About Proposed 45% Increase in Truck Tolls

This story appears in the Nov. 19 print edition of Transport Topics.

The New York State Thruway’s board of directors last week canceled the second of two meetings within four days at which the board was to address a proposed 45% increase in toll rates for trucks.

The cancellation of the scheduled Nov. 13 meeting followed the cancellation of a meeting that had been set for Nov. 9.

In May, Thruway officials published a proposal that could raise the toll for a 5-axle truck running the length of the highway to $99.98 from the current $68.95 (6-4, p. 27).

In a statement issued after the second meeting was canceled, Thomas Madison, the Thruway’s executive director, said the toll increase for trucks is “a complex issue” that requires more evaluation before the board considers it.

“The Thruway is looking at a number of options and doing extensive research, and it will continue to do this due diligence work before another meeting is called and a recommendation is made,” Madison said.

The New York State Motor Truck Association countered with a statement of its own that said: “It is suspect that the Thruway Authority is now claiming to be doing their due diligence regarding possible alternatives to a 45% commercial toll increase, considering they told investors they saw no reason the increase would not move forward before even holding public hearings on the matter.”

When the proposed truck-only toll increase was announced in May, Thruway officials said they needed the additional revenue to shore up the agency’s financial profile so it can issue bonds to help pay for construction of a new Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River.

The authority operates the bridge, which connects Westchester and Rockland counties north of Manhattan, and the 570-mile Thruway, which runs from the New Jersey state line north to Albany before turning west to Buffalo and Pennsylvania.

“The increased public scrutiny over their secretive ways and the exposure of their decades of wasteful spending seem to be making it more difficult for the authority to simply look to the trucking industry once again to bail them out for their mismanagement,” the N.Y. truckers’ statement said. One member of the board of directors said after the second meeting cancellation that she was as puzzled as the public by the cancellations and Madison’s statement.

“I’m beginning to think that if the 45% [toll increase] is needed, why are we playing games with it?” Donna Luh, vice chairwoman of the Thruway board, told the Buffalo News in a Nov. 13 interview published on the newspaper’s website. “I’m beginning to think that 45% is not a figure we need.”

The newspaper reported that Luh said board chairman Howard Milstein and the Thruway staff have not told her whether the agency will continue to propose a 45% increase in truck tolls or whether an alternative figure is being considered.

The Thruway’s proposal to raise truck tolls ignited a firestorm of criticism last spring, and not just from the trucking community.

Upstate residents complained too, but the loudest outcry came from such business groups as farmers, grocery stores, manufacturers, the lumber and paper industry and the dairy industry.

They said raising truck tolls constituted a blow to the regional economy because, if transportation costs increase, so does the cost of consumer goods. A coalition of 22 business groups was formed to fight the proposed toll increase (7-23, p. 4).