Cashless Tolls Coming To MTA Bridges, Tunnels In 2017

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced toll gates on New York City’s bridges and tunnels will be eliminated next year, CBS NEW YORK reports.

Starting in January, tollbooths on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s seven bridges and two tunnels will be replaced with an electronic scanning system. The 100 billion transportation overhaul will be the largest single investment in infrastructure in the state’s history.

Electronic devices will collect money from drivers through E-ZPass, or a bill will be sent in the mail for those who pay with cash. The cameras can also snap photos of license plates at any speed and in any weather.

 

{Matzav.com}


8 COMMENTS

  1. Even by the Verrizanno bridge? That would really be great and save a lot of time and traffic. It sounds to good to be true. They will probably find some reason to davka keep the Verrizanno with the stupid sticks going up and down just to stick it to us.

  2. WOW! New Yawk and New Joisey have all these neat toll bridges wherever you go! Every time you travel you need to bring money to pay these tolls or put a large balance of money on your E-Z P ass. The lefty politicians in New Yawk and New Joisey really know how to rip you guys off. You won’t find this type of “Highway Robery” anywhere else in the country. What thieves!

  3. For the eight toll bridges in the greater San Jose – San Francisco – Oakland metro, area there are still the “regular” toll gates. However, the majority of the toll lanes are exclusively for those drivers using the automated electronic tracking system called “FasTrack,” with a few lanes for both FasTrack drivers and drivers paying there on the sport with cash. See the picture at https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/guide/bridgesParking.shtml. The picture here of the toll gate at the George Washington Bridge shows a similar setup, with many lanes exclusively for the automated electronic tracking system called “EZPass,” with a few lanes for both EZPass and drivers paying on the sport with cash. What the new plans then plan to change is that even the drivers who do not have an EZPass account will not stop to pay any money when crossing the bridge. Rather — similar to what occurs with the EZPass drivers — the camera machines at the bridge will take images of their license plates and thus send bills to their homes (i.e. whatever address is registered with each license).

    As the foremost and largest city in the country, New York City, is implementing this new toll collection method setup, it is very probable that the major SJ – SF – Oak metro area mentioned above, along with many other major urban areas, will also adopt this new method, until, eventually, ALL toll collections will be done this way.

  4. On the surface, it looks like this new “modern” method of toll collections is a great thing. With pre-paid toll accounts like EZPass in New York and FasTrack in California, a person merely sets up the account, pre pays a certain amount of money, he or she is sent a special electronic tag to be placed on the car; then, when he or she drives that car through the toll gate, an electronic sensor there will pick up the signal from the tag and thus access the account and deduct the charge of the toll. With these newest changes now being planned for New York City, a person does not even need to set up or pre pay any fancy account. Instead, he or she can merely drive the car up through the toll gate, and an automatic camera there will take a picture of the car’s license plate; the camera’s computer will thus access the DMV record of that license number and send a bill to the name and address of that number.

    With both ways, when making the trip, the driver does not need to worry about making sure to have on hand an adequate amount of cash for the toll. Furthermore, when reaching the bridge, the driver — ALL of the hundreds of drivers coming there at any one moment — WILL NOT NEED TO STOP for paying the tolls! So instead of the traffic being stopped and heavily backed up at the toll gate, it will just smoothly proceed from the road right onto the bridge! Of course, not having to take up more time is great for all travelers; it is especially crucial for business people, both managers and employees, who absolutely must be at the places of their work at certain times.

  5. However, this “modern” automated-electronic-tracking-toll-collecting has a gravely serious dark side. For every time a person drives his or her car over that bridge or through that tunnel, whether it is by the number on the car’s license plate or/and by the electronic signal from the tag from EZPass or FasTrack or whichever local toll collection agency he or she has an account with, THE FACT THAT, AT THIS TIME, THIS PERSON IS CROSSING THIS BRIDGE (OR GOING THROUGH THIS TUNNEL) IS BEING NOTED AND RECORDED!!

    Furthermore, this is not just with major bridges and tunnels. Very many major highways, or certain parts of certain highways also have tolls! The Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_toll_roads_in_the_United_States shows that 26 states plus the territory of Puerto Rico all have some toll roads. The large chart there, by state, of all the tolled road sections, shows that very many of them are with “All-electronic tolls” — no cash! So again, every time a person goes on one of those many routes, and the toll is being automatically paid by the electronic track of his or her car, that IS being noted and recorded!

    So as more and more miles of roads are requiring tolls, and as more and more of those tolls are being done automatically electronically, the agencies of our government are able to know more and more about where more and more individual people are going!

  6. This phenomenon, of our government being able to more and more watch more and more people and to more and more know more and more about what they are doing, is occurring not just at a number of toll booths on a number of highways. Rather, it is occurring at virtually every turn and position where people are! Please see the March issue of the magazine “Whistleblower” (available at http://superstore.wnd.com/Whistleblower-Single-Issue-March-2012). With its cover story of “ONE NATION UNDER SURVEILLANCE: ‘Big Brother is watching’ in ways Orwell never dreamed,” its articles point out frightening fact that — from the countless surveillance cameras at almost all places of business to the tracking mechanisms of countless Internet web sites, and from the tracking actions of a person’s cell phone to the automated cameras that are (not just at the toll booths of the Verrazano Bridge, but are) on the traffic lights of almost every intersection — the government has virtually endless ways by which it can closely watch and know where people are going, what they are doing, and even what they are thinking!!

  7. The Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Toras Chaim in Denver, Rav Yisroel Meir Kagan, Sh’lita, wrote a biography of, L’Havdil Bein HaChaim L’HaChaim, the founding Rosh Yeshiva of Beis Medrosh Gevoha in Lakewood, Rav Aharon Kotler, ZT’L. [It was originally published in the magazine “The Jewish Observer.” Much later on, the staff of The Jewish Observer and the staff of the ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications company took the very numerous biographies of Gedolay Torah that had, over the years, been published in “The Jewish Observer” magazine and put them together in book form. They put (for example) 15 biographies together in one book and published it; then they put (for example) another 15 biographies together in another book and published it, and so on. Eventually, they had thus produced a long series of these books of biographies from The Jewish Observer. The first of these was published in 1982 and was titled “The Torah World”; it contains the Rav Kagan biography of Rav Aharon. (It is available at http://artscroll.com/Books/9780899068541.html; see the links there to the other volumes of the series.)]

    In the biography, Rav Kagan relates about the numerous commutes between Lakewood and New York City and other trips that Rav Aharon needed to make. As travelers who have been to and certainly residents who have lived in the wider New York City – Northeastern New Jersey area are keenly aware, the area is full of a good number of major bridges and tunnels and highways that have tolls on them. So any significant trip there is likely to encounter at least one toll plaza, and so Rav Aharon, in his many trips through there, encountered toll plazas very many times.

    In those days, at the toll gates, there were “regular” booths that were operated by people, AND, there were also booths that were automated. Now that “automation” was nothing like the electronic sensors or cameras that we have today. Rather, in the booth, there was a large basket, into which the driver would toss the needed coins of the toll amount. The coins would then fall down through a hole in the bottom of the basket into a mechanism that, being hit with the right coins, would trigger the toll block to open.

    UPON APPROACHING A TOLL PLAZA, RAV AHARON WOULD INSTRUCT THE DRIVER TO ABSOLUTELY NOT GO TO THE AUTOMATED BOOTHS!! FOR HE STATED THAT TO DO THAT, TO CHOOSE TO USE A MACHINE INSTEAD OF A HUMAN BEING, WOULD BE A GRAVE INSULT TO THE TZELEM ELOKIM OF THE DIVINELY CREATED HUMAN BEING!!

    L’Aniyus Da’ati, I think that we can further assume and thus state that, Rav Aharon, with his superb Torah far reaching insight and Ruach HaKodesh, in his exclaiming that choosing the machine was insulting humanity, he was also realizing and alluding to the horrific sinister tyrannical manipulations — the epitome of insult to the Divine creation of man — that this modern hyper-super excessive automation would eventually lead to.

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