Council ‘Stridently Opposes’ Port Authority Toll Hike Plan

The Fort Lee Borough Council Thursday passed a resolution officially opposing the Port Authority’s proposal to raise tolls on the George Washington Bridge and other Hudson River crossings.

The resolution—originally introduced by Councilman Jan Goldberg—states that the borough “stridently opposes” the agency’s plan to increase tolls “that will impose an unreasonable burden upon users of the bridges and tunnels” and urges the members of the Port Authority’s board to “reject the proposed toll increases.”

The resolution also calls on the governors of New York and New Jersey to veto the plan. A copy of the resolution will be sent to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and state legislators.

Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, who was joined at a public hearing in Fort Lee Tuesday by Councilmen Harvey Sohmer and Goldberg and was the first to speak, expressed his “opposition to the current status of the proposal,” calling Fort Lee residents “among [the Port Authority’s] best customers” and saying “the timing of this initiative could not be worse.”

“There must be a happy medium,” Sokolich said at the time.

Sokolich reiterated that stance at Thursday's regular meeting of the Fort Lee Mayor and Council, saying to Fort Lee residents, “We’ve done everything we can to object to and prevent the increases.”

“And they are exorbitant increases,” Sokolich said. “If you go back and forth on that bridge on a daily basis, it is clearly, clearly a very, very expensive undertaking. So we were there; we were there in strength. Many of us attended, and we made it perfectly clear that the Borough of Fort Lee is against those toll increases.”

Fort Lee resident Nina Levinson, who also spoke at the Port Authority's public hearing Tuesday, thanked the mayor at Thursday’s meeting for speaking and for what he said on behalf of the borough. She also likened tolls on the bridge to a tax for people who work in the city or otherwise need to get back and forth regularly.

“If some of those orange shirts will have less of a job, I feel sorry for them,” Levinson said Thursday, referring to the many union members who turned Tuesday wearing orange t-shirt with the words “Port Authority = Jobs.” “But I feel that the amount that they are asking for is very inflationary … People can’t keep paying and paying and paying … If you work in the city, you have to pay for it; you have to get across.”

Councilman Joseph Cervieri weighed in Thursday as well, taking issue with the Port Authority’s contention that one of the projects the fare and toll hikes would fund would be to replace all 592 suspender ropes at the 80-year-old George Washington Bridge at a cost of $1 billion.

“That’s something new to us,” Cervieri said. “It never came to our attention before.”

He went on to mention a PBS documentary he had saw “six or seven years ago” on the George Washington Bridge.

“And on the things that was in that documentary was a plan to build this helix,” Cervieri said. “The helix was supposed to run from the Palisades Interstate Parkway to the lower level of the bridge. The estimated completion date was 2010. Now 2011, we haven’t heard boo about it. Our traffic continues to escalate. The Port Authority has completely ignored a major capital program, which they promised to this community and never delivered upon.”

He pointed out that had that project been implemented, it would have kept plenty of people gainfully employed for years.

“So let’s not forget that the Port Authority sometimes speaks out of both sides of their mouth,” Cervieri said.

Earlier in the day Thursday, the governors of New Jersey and New York gave their approval to scale back the toll hikes.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sent a joint letter to the Port Authority’s chairman and vice chairman laying out a new proposal.

That plan would raise tolls $1.50 next month with hikes of 75 cents per year through 2015 to follow.

The governors’ scaled-back toll hike proposal would also raise tolls for E-ZPass customers by a total of $4.50 as opposed to the $6 increase the Port Authority proposed two weeks ago.

Commuters who pay cash would face a $2 surcharge in addition to the $4.50 increase—also less than the $3 originally proposed by the Port Authority—making their total $12 this year with smaller increases each year through 2015.

“In the past week, we have worked with Governors Christie and Cuomo to conclude a toll and fare proposal for the Port Authority. We support the proposal laid out today by the Governors and will move this proposal to the Board [Friday],” said Port Authority chairman David Samson and vice chairman Stanley Grayson in a joint statement Thursday.

The Port Authority Board of Commissioners is expected to vote on the proposed toll and fare increases Friday morning.