new york

by New York deep mayor Stephen Goldsmith, WALL STREET JOURNAL 2011-03-18

A new report to customers by New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NYMTA) is mostly devoted to what's being done to make the subways and buses run better but there are couple of pages embracing all-electronic tolling at the City's bridges and tunnels. The report is titled "Making every dollar count" Agenda 2011." There's a link to the full report at the bottom.

Big shots at New York's MTA did a ceremonial removal of a toll gate for the cameras today at the Henry Hudson bridge toll plaza on the northern tip of Manhattan. Seven overcoated gloved officials were led in the media performance by the giraffe-like Jay Walder chairman/CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority - a man of basketballer height at close to 7ft, 2m tall.  

New York's MTA Bridges and Tunnels (MTAB&T) plans toll rate increases at year's end designed to increase revenues 7.5 percent from its seven toll bridges and two toll tunnels. E-ZPass transponder toll rates are to go up 5% while cash rates will rise cash tolls go up 18.2% at most crossings - by $1.00 at the majors and 50c at the minors.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board will decide October 27 between two toll hike proposals designed to increase revenues about 7.5% or from $1411m to $1517m on a full year basis. With traffic likely to decline slightly, toll rates have to be increased nearly 10% to hit these revenue numbers, officials say.

The court battle over alleged "fraud" by Telvent against MTA Bridges and Tunnels (MTAB&T) made by fired senior Telvent officer Phil Leshinsky is set to revolve around arcane complexities of its procurement procedures of the New York City toiler. At issue is how Telvent bid for the E-ZPass maintenance contract awarded by MTAB&T in 2008 in which the company displaced TransCore on hardware maintenance.

Telvent has formally requested that MTA Bridges and Tunnels (MTAB&T) bring forward an audit of their E-ZPass maintenance contract and associated accounts in response to sensational allegations of "fraud"  by Phil Leshinsky, former senior officer of Telvent and further back at MTAB&T itself. In a separate development we have the first reaction from MTAB&T whom we have hit with a number of questions.

MTA Bridges & Tunnels, America's biggest toiler - $1.32b, 755k tolls/day - say they've found $20m of savings to assist the budgetary challenges of the larger New York area Metropolitan Transportation Authority of which they are a part. The $20m compares with overall operating costs in 2009 of $425m, so is 4.7%.

The savings are to be achieved via:

InfraAmericas is organizing its Sixth Annual US P3 Infrastructure Forum in New York City on June 22 & 23.
 
The forum is the P3 industry’s premier gathering of infrastructure developers, investors, financiers, state and federal public officials, and regional transportation authorities spread over two days.
 
Public Officials

A commission appointed by New York State Governor David Paterson says there's major potential in  a state program to develop availability payment concessions for bridges.