MTA: Open-road tolling speed bump ‘common’ growing pain

Cash tolling came to an end at the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges over the weekend, but traffic at their toll plazas will stick around a little longer, MTA officials said Monday.

Two days after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority implemented open-road, cashless tolling at its last two crossings, traffic backups slowed the commutes of some drivers at the Bronx-Queens spans.

MTA Bridge and Tunnels spokesman Christopher McKniff cited two reasons for the congestion. First, work to remove the center toll booths at both bridges required that traffic be diverted through the outside booths.

McKniff said the MTA expects the center booths and concrete islands to be removed and the lanes to be repaved and re-striped by this weekend. Crews will then shift to removing the outermost booths, but that work should have less impact on traffic, he said.

Also contributing to traffic, McKniff said, are some motorists slowing down unnecessarily as they drive through the elevated gantries used for the MTA’s new cashless tolling system. The gantries contain sensors that read E-ZPass transponders and cameras that photograph the license plates of cars without E-ZPass.

MTA officials have said motorists need not slow down beyond the posted speed limits for the new tolling technology to work.

“Slowdowns at each toll plaza are common as drivers get used to the open-road tolling environment,” McKniff said. “The good thing is that the toll booths will be completely removed in the coming weeks and no one will ever have to sit at one at an MTA crossing ever again.”

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By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.