New Jersey

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) - of which the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel toll authority is a division - is reversing its stance defending free toll transponders (and transit passes) for current and former board members. They announced May 29 that they would, after all, comply with state Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo's May 25 demand that the program be discontinued immediately.
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James McGreevey was a hard charging, order screaming governor who, good or bad, had a lasting impact on American tollroads during his short term in office Jan 2002 to Nov 2004. He came to office promising to consolidate the state's three tollroads into one super-efficient entity.
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A leading New Jersey legislator Senator Ray Lesniak says he's pushing a plan to boost toll revenues in the state to support what he calls "absolutely necessary" transport improvements. The plan involves two 50% hikes in tolls, one immediately and the other in five years time.
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Governor Corzine has acknowledged he isn't getting political support for his big tollroads monetization plan that he put out early this year. And his supporters are saying only a much scaled down version of the plan is possible together with abandonment of the elaborate set of political cutouts Corzine proposed to limit backsliding - what some have characterized as a Rube Goldberg legal contraption.
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New Jersey Republican legislative leaders have raised an interesting constitutional challenge to Governor Cozine's tollroad monetization scheme. Senate GOP leader Tom Kean and assembly leader Alex DeCroce say it violates a constitutional bar on granting special privileges.
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Under Governor Corzine's draft legislation to monetize New Jersey's tollroads, the New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway, the Atlantic City Expressway and NJ440 would be transferred to a New Jersey Turnpike Authority reconstituted as New Jersey Capital Solutions Corporation (NJCSC). 1985 words  read more »

New Jersey senate president Richard J Codey is proposing frequent driver discounts as a way of easing the pain of toll increases proposed by Gov Corzine. He's suggesting a 20% discount for tolls with monthly bills of over $200 and smaller discounts of 15, 10 and 5 percent for smaller bills. The discounts would be applied to E-ZPass accounts. About 60% of tolls in the state are taken by E-ZPass.
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Governor Corzine and his administration specified the New Jersey toll increases to be modeled by their traffic and revenue (T&R) consultants in a reversal of the normal relationship. 3095 words  read more »

Governor Jon Corzine is proposing creation of a state owned but independently controlled Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) to take over New Jersey's tollroads under a toll concession that would raise $37.6b - for paydown of state debt and transport improvements. The concession agreement would allow maximum increases of 50% in toll rates in 2010 and further 50% toll hikes in 2014, 2018, and 2022, plus inflation adjustments on an annual basis.
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The Asbury Park Press, the leading newspaper on the Jersey shore has taken discussion of Governor Jon Corzine's protracted policymaking on the future of the state's tollroads to a new level of passion by portraying him on their frontpage as a sleazy salesman under the headline "Hocking the Highways". (see nearby) There was a subhead "Broken promises of New Jersey's toll roads".
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The Corzine administration has filed a paper with a Superior Court in Trenton arguing that since their consultant studies on privatization and monetization of the New Jersey Turnpike are incomplete they are exempt from open records laws.

Two Republican state legislators filed a lawsuit demanding release of the consultant report after the state treasury department rejected their requests for copies.
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The Corzine administration is under a court order to appear before a superior court judge Nov 16 to explain why it won't release an $800k study by Steer Davies Gleave on various scenarios for monetizing or privatizing tollroads in the state. Republican members of the legislature lodged the lawsuit for the release of the document last month.
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An opinion poll released today shows Governor Jon Corzine faces almost as much public skepticism about "monetization" of the New Jersey Turnpike as about privatization in the form of a longterm lease/concession. 349 words  read more »

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has deferred the detailing of proposals for reorganization of the New Jersey Turnpike until after the November elections, according to the Star-Ledger newspaper. 221 words  read more »

The state supreme court in New Jersey has issued a stinging rebuke to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority over a case where the tollster tried to override a labor arbitrator. The court ordered the Turnpike to reinstate Jason Glassey, 34, to a Garden State Parkway toll collector position from which he was fired in Nov 2003.
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