New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has failed to collect $5.1 billion in tolls and fees over just four years, outraging residents who are meanwhile being asked to pay new congestion pricing rates.
The agency said that “toll violations” exceeded $1.4 billion in 2024, as well as $3.7 billion between 2021 and 2023, according to a report from the New York Post.
That comes as certain residents find ways to cheat the system, such as by using “ghost plates” to avoid collection of the tolls through the new “cashless” systems.
But commuters in the Big Apple are now forking over $9 congestion tolls to enter Manhattan in a new program unveiled last month. The $500 million to $800 million to be collected from commuters each year does not even come close to matching the amount lost through violations.
New Yorkers therefore see the congestion prices as unfair.
“They need to crack down more on people who don’t pay the tolls, instead of charging the rest of us so much,” Kenny McCutcheon, a truck driver from Long Island, told the Post.
“I think it’s ridiculous I gotta pay $9 just to come here.”
Benjamin Li, who runs a smoothie cart and commutes from Brooklyn to the Financial District, said that he now drives into Manhattan at 4:45 a.m. to avoid the $9 fee, instead paying the $2.25 fee imposed outside of peak commuting hours.
“I obey the law, whatever they charge. But I see so many people trying to save money illegally with ghost plates,” Li said.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman condemned the situation as well.
“This is what happens when you have a state that doesn’t enforce its laws and people feel they can get away with anything due to the incompetence of leadership in Albany and at the MTA,” he remarked.
“Taxpayers are left with the burden of having to close the huge deficits with idiotic programs like congestion pricing which based on the MTA’s track record, most people won’t pay either.”
The new congestion prices were launched amid several shockingly violent incidents on New York City subways, meaning that some residents feel like they are being pressured to take public transit and encounter safety threats, or else be stuck with the massive $9 fee.
Just this past Sunday, yet another lunatic stabbed a fellow passenger on the subway multiple times, as noted by the Post.
The lawlessness in New York City can and should rightly incense law-abiding residents.
The leadership of America’s biggest metropolis truly seems to be draining everyday hard-working citizens, all while failing to provide a basic environment of law and order.
As law-abiding people reach their breaking points, the city will have less taxpayers to leech from, and the situation will only worsen.
That is, of course, unless New Yorkers muster the political will to save their city.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post New York City Is Raising Toll Prices for Law-Abiding Citizens After Failing to Collect Billions from Toll Cheats appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Source: The Gateway Pundit
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