Issue Position: Roll Back Parkway Tolls

Issue Position

t's time to roll back last year's Parkway toll increase for Ocean County residents. It was unfair when imposed on New Year's Day 2012, and since Sandy washed away $4.6 billion worth of taxable property in the county, it has become a burden -- in effect, a state tax on many Ocean County residents of $500 a year or more.

A roll back for most Ocean County E-ZPass users is entirely possible; it would not be the first time a New Jersey toll authority provided toll relief because of geography.

In fact, since 2008 the New Jersey Turnpike Authority has given a break to residents of Florence and Roebling in Burlington County who use Turnpike Exit 6 and the Turnpike extension there that links with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. But they don't use the Delaware River bridge that the higher Exit 6 toll helps pay for. So residents of those two zip codes who have toll tags issued by New Jersey E-ZPass pay less than everyone else at that interchange. They don't have to apply for the discount, it happens automatically by virtue of their address.

The Turnpike Authority, which operates the Garden State Parkway, should do the same for the residents of Ocean County.

Virtually every toll authority in the region is extracting much more money from motorists now than at the start of the Great Recession. Even as unemployment soared and household income sank, Delaware River tolls jumped 25%, Hudson River tolls oozed up by $1 in December after doubling from 2001, Turnpike tolls spiked 53% last year, and Parkway tolls roared up by 50%.

Commuting is expensive, and those Parkway toll increases added a particularly heavy burden for Ocean County families. Mass transit barely exists in the county. The same can be said for good paying jobs. If you have a good, year-around job, chances are it isn't here. And if that job is north of Ocean County, as is also likely, you probably use the Garden State Parkway to get there.
How many Ocean County commuters use the Parkway every day? How much do they pay in tolls?

Good questions, but without answers. The Parkway says it doesn't know and it would be difficult to find out -- curious for an agency that operates a $400-million-plus highway business.
But given the addition of Ocean County traffic lanes and access ramps in the last few years, it has to be a big number. Those ramps are there for local Ocean County access, not Atlantic City buses.

And the folks who collect the tolls fully understand that the Parkway is a virtual monopoly. A recent Turnpike Authority financial document included an engineer's report that addresses "elasticity of demand" by Turnpike and Parkway users. Likely variations in demand as computed by the engineers, it reports, are very small. "In fact," the engineer explains, "it is logical that these values are so low given the near monopolistic nature of these two toll roads for north-south travel in the state.

In other words, drivers have no practical alternatives. And while that's true for the whole state, the impact for Ocean County is particularly severe. The Parkway is the north-south corridor, the county's economic aorta, carrying both automobile and commercial traffic. The only remotely practical alternative is U.S. Route 9, which south of Toms River is mostly two lanes with frequent traffic lights and lots of congestion. North of Toms River, of course, the Parkway itself is designated as Route 9. The Parkway crosses 10 counties, but only Ocean County is so uniquely dependent and totally captive.

Now consider the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Clearly, the storm did its worst in Ocean County, wiping out some $4.6 billion in property tax evaluation. Home-owning tax payers will be making up the difference, and it won't just be in hard-hit beach towns. The county government loss must be made up county-wide, and county taxes account for approximately a third of many municipal tax bills. While we don't yet know what those increases will be, Freeholder Joe Vicari recently told the Ocean County Mayors' Association that they will be "significant."

Ocean County home owners will certainly see greater tax hikes than their counterparts in other counties.
Before the toll increase, a Toms River commuter who works in Newark paid approximately $1,000 a year in Parkway tolls, along with a 14.5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax. Now that driver pays about $1,500. That $500 difference is an unfair, onerous tax increase.

It's time to do what the Turnpike Authority did for Florence and Roebling: roll back the tolls for Ocean County.

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