New York could start charging drivers $15 to enter Manhattan as soon as mid-June, a lawyer for the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority told a judge at a hearing on New Jersey’s lawsuit to block the plan.
The MTA may decide on the final tolling structure by the end of March, attorney Mark Chertok told Judge Leo Gordon during a status conference Tuesday in Newark. That would lead to several further steps in the approval process. The toll, to be imposed on motorists driving into Manhattan’s central business district, would be the first of its kind in the US.
When the idea first came up with Bloomberg, it was gonna be an $8 toll and a full toll credit for the then about $4 and change toll (ezpass price, $6 cash) while using ezpass. Immediately after that plan came out the Port Authority (which runs Holland and Lincoln) immediately raised their ezpass price for the tunnels to $8. For a time I believe all toll credits were taken off the table because of what the PA did 15 years ago, and toll credits have been very contentious since.