Forty-four cars — representing nearly $1 million in unpaid tolls and fines — were impounded this week in a toll enforcement blitz on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, MTA officials announced Friday.
“Our message today is simple: If you cover your license plate — even with a clear casing — or use fraudulent plates … you will pay the price,” MTA chair Janno Lieber said at a press conference in Staten Island.
License plate coverings and fake or fraudulent plates helped cost the MTA more than $46 million in lost toll revenue in 2022, according to the agency’s fare evasion report published this spring.
“This is about fundamental fairness,” Lieber said. “It’s not right when drivers, some rolling around in Mercedes and Porsches, come on to our bridges and through tunnels and skip out on paying thousands and thousands of dollars in tolls.”
“That is your money they’re taking — that is the public’s money,” he added.
Lieber singled out one vehicle, parked behind his podium — a dark, late-model Range Rover — as belonging to the most egregious offender, who allegedly owes more than $52,000 in tolls and fees.
The MTA’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel authority has impounded 2,718 vehicles to date this year for failing to pay tolls on the agency’s bridges and tunnels.
Tolls on MTA crossings rose in August, part of an overall fare and toll hike across the MTA system. Drivers with a New York State-issued EZPass must now pay $6.94 at the major crossings —the Verrazzano, Whitestone, Throgs Neck and RFK/Triborough bridges and the Queens Midtown and Hugh L. Carey Brooklyn Battery tunnels.
The price is $11.19 for drivers without EZPass, where license plate cameras are used to identify drivers so that they can be charged by mail.
Those seeking a free ride are known to cover up their license plate, or mount counterfeit plates to their cars.
Impounded vehicles can be re-registered and returned to their owners only after all tolls and fines are paid, officials said.
Friday’s announcement also sought to assure the public that the MTA is capable of cracking down on fake-plated drivers ahead of the expected start to congestion pricing.
The same technology — EZPass readers and license plate cameras — will be used to assess congestion tolls for vehicles entering Midtown and lower Manhattan once the plan goes into effect.