New Jersey As Sin Tax
First they take our football teams, then they want to gouge us on tolls when we want to go root for the Giants:
Posted: January 15th, 2008 | Filed under: Consumer Issues, Jerk Move, Staten IslandThis one will make you think twice about heading to New Jersey to shop, gamble, visit friends or sun on your favorite beach.
Do some quick math on New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s proposed toll hikes on Garden State roads, and it gets ugly really fast. By 2022, just 14 years away, football fans could end up paying $27.92 roundtrip to take the New Jersey Turnpike to Exit 16W at Giants Stadium — and that’s not counting the toll on the Goethals Bridge.
Already slammed with recently passed toll increases on the Goethals and Bayonne bridges and the Outerbridge Crossing, Island motorists who regularly travel to New Jersey may find it a much harder pill to swallow if Corzine’s proposal to hike tolls on some of the state’s busiest roads every four years is passed into law.
Corzine announced last week a proposal to increase tolls 50 percent in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 on the Garden State Parkway, New Jersey Turnpike and Atlantic City Expressway. Those increases, which would also affect a new toll on Route 440, would include inflation adjustments. Tolls would be increased every four years between 2022 and 2085 to reflect inflation.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Bernardo Mendez of New Springville, clad in a New York Giants jacket. Mendez makes regular trips to New Jersey to go bowling, shop and go to Giants games, but will reconsider doing so if the tolls spike as much as proposed. “For people with a lot of money, they don’t care, but for people working very hard just to survive, it’ll make it very hard. It will definitely have an impact on going to New Jersey as often as I used to.”
Other examples of 2022 tolls are even more egregious: A roundtrip on the Garden State Parkway to Point Pleasant Beach and back would be $15.60 and a trip to Atlantic City would be $28.74. Even the short jaunt on the Turnpike to IKEA or the Jersey Gardens mall — a destination for many Island shoppers — would cost $7.38.
