mtab&t

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.

A few days back we were reprimanded by an official at New York's MTA Bridges and Tunnels for referring to her chairman and CEO Jay Walder's "giraffe-like" figure. It was unkind and "unprofessional," she said. Our retort was that it was a light-hearted poke, and that if he was sensitive about it he shouldn't appear in public ceremonies and pose for official photographs beside his comparatively tiny MTA colleagues.

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.

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.

Phillip S Leshinsky a toll industry veteran has sued his former employer Telvent in US District Court in Manhattan for $875k in lost wages and damages, claiming he had legal privilege as a whistleblower against Telvent on what his suit says was "unethical, dishonest and probably illegal" behavior at the expense of the big New York City toller MTA Bridges and Tunnels (MTAB&T).

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:

MTA Bridges and Tunnels (MTAB&T) in New York is joining the list of US toll authorities planning or studying going cashless. Later this year the New York toller will commission a study on the feasibility of replacing cash collection with video. The news was a single sentence in a long prepared speech by MTA chief executive Elliot Sander titled "The State of the MTA" at Cooper Union on the authority's 40th anniversary: