New Jersey

Patrick Foye, chief executive at the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) says the law suits by their pensioners to maintain lifetime toll-free privileges are "offensive." Playing hardball he has asked New York and New Jersey tax agencies to investigate whether the pensioners owe the two states taxes on the value of these "perks." And whether they should be charged interest and tax penalties for failing to declare their taxable value.

The South Jersey Transportation Authority (SJTA) board formally decided today to privatize manual toll collection services on the Atlantic City Expressway voting to accept a bid from Faneuil Inc of Hampton VA. At the board's monthly meeting the outsourcing resolution was passed unanimously.

Faneuil and three others responded to an August 29/30 RFP for toll services September 15.

The resolution reads:

Friday August 19 was Capitulation Day at the Port Authority New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ).

The New Jersey Turnpike has deferred a board of directors vote on plans to outsource cash toll collection. Due to be considered at the meeting Wednesday (Apr 27) the matter is being deferred a while. Spokesman Tom Feeney told reporters today: "We’re still wrapping up various issues."

New Jersey seems to have a knack for attracting a disproportionate share of the country's tasteless, crooked, and plain inept 'businessmen.' And for putting their constructs on display for the passing traveler, as if to say "This Joisie, and dohn ya fuhrgeddit."

Supporters of the Hudson River rail tunnel to New York City prevailed 27-9 in the New Jersey senate passing a bill S2636 instructing the New Jersey Turnpike to roll back toll increases designed in part to fund the cancelled tunnel.

1    AN ACT concerning the collection of tolls by the New Jersey
2    Turnpike    Authority    and    supplementing    P .L.1948,    c.454
3    (C.27:23-1 et seq.).
4
5    BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State
6    of New Jersey:
7

They call it the Express E-ZPass lane - what we call generically open road tolling (ORT). It's a single highway speed electronic toll lane on I-80 at the toll point for the Delaware Water Gap Bridge over the upper Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania near Stroudsburg PA. They opened it in a provisional configuration November 22 alongside five stop-to-pay cash lanes that also accept an E-ZPass transponder. (Tolling here is westbound only.)

Turnpike officials say that the their number 2, deputy executive director John O'Hern personally led a small rescue team to get 125 people to safety who were stranded in the snow Sunday night on the Garden State Parkway north of Atlantic City. O'Hern heard the reports and led a maintenance man and two state troopers to search out the stranded people. They gave them bottled water and radioed for a bus to pick them up.

- first reported by Karen Rouse, Bergen Record

TOLLROADSnews 2010-12-27

To the great relief of major toll agencies who were potentially on the hook for billions of $s of unproductive debt, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie today reaffirmed his cancellation of the $11b to $14b project.