Charging parkway tolls keeps taking a large toll

Charging parkway tolls
keeps taking a large toll

When campaigning for governor in 2001, Democratic candidate James McGreevey talked about eliminating tolls on the Garden State Parkway by 2007. McGreevey did not seem to have much conviction about actually eliminating tolls, however.

Pressure by Republican Bret Schundler — who said he would eliminate the parkway’s tollbooths and tolls within a year of being elected — forced McGreevey to say something, so he did.

Well, McGreevey won and it’s 2004, but the parkway tolls are nowhere close to being eliminated. If anything, the notion of a parkway without tolls is further off than ever.

Last week McGreevey announced a plan to take down some tollbooths on the parkway, but make no mistake, this is in no way a step along the path to getting rid of parkway tolls. Quite the opposite is true.

The plan the McGreevey administration announced last week — taking the northbound tollbooths off the Raritan plaza and the southbound tollbooths off the Asbury Park plaza — is a plan to keep tolls on the parkway for as far into the future as anyone can see, and probably a good while beyond that as well.

The plan will simply double the toll at the southbound Raritan toll plaza and at the northbound Asbury Park toll plaza.

Thanks, Mr. Governor, for a plan that does nothing to relieve drivers of the cost of using the road.

While those people who have chosen to pay $1 every month for the privilege of using EZ-Pass will have the pleasure of a less interrupted drive on the parkway, those who do not subscribe to the state’s toll road passport program will probably find using the road far less convenient, even with fewer tollbooths in place.

The toll plazas on the parkway lead to accidents, wasted time, pollution and wasted gas.

A study of the parkway published last year in Transporta-tion Quarterly, a journal focusing on transportation issues across the country, placed the cost of collecting parkway tolls at more than 37 cents for each dollar.

Schundler had it right in the fall of 2001 when he said he would dump the parkway’s tollbooths and tolls within a year of being elected. He was not successful in his campaign.

McGreevey seems committed to the Express E-ZPass system that will allow tolls to be collected while drivers maintain their speed on the parkway. He should start the process of eliminating tolls — not tollbooths — but we have no reason to believe he will.