Commuters into Manhattan who read last month’s stories about the widespread desire among New Jersey residents to leave the state have yet another reason to want out after Sunday’s toll hike at the Port Authority’s crossings into the city.Following the recent increase of 75 cents, it now costs drivers up to $14 to cross the George Washington Bridge, when it isn’t closed for traffic studies. That’s a serious price to pay for commuters who have to navigate it and the other bridges and tunnels as part of their jobs.



AAA lost its bid for a preliminary injunction that would have put the brakes on the toll increase for the time being. The group’s argument is that the toll money is being steered toward projects such as the Pulaski Skyway rehabilitation project and work on routes 1 and 9. We’ll take that one step further. At least those projects all have to do with roads, even if they fall outside the Port Authority’s jurisdiction. Where we start to feel logic and the system part company is in the agency’s continued moonlighting into real estate projects.



On a clear day, drivers crossing the George Washington Bridge can make out one of the chief reasons for all these toll hikes — the gigantic tower rising out of Lower Manhattan. The agency has been stuck managing the expensive, drawn-out construction and painfully slow leasing that have gone with One World Trade Center, for the simple reason that it could. The fact that no private developer was willing to take on that kind of risk should have brought pause to the Port Authority, but when the agency is able to work behind the scenes with the governors of both states — as was alleged in reports in the press — to ensure tolls can be as high as needed, there’s no way to balance its desire for these projects.



On top of that, projects such as One World Trade Center undermine New Jersey competitively. The addition of more office space, subsidized by the tolls of people who commute to work there, puts developers of projects in New Jersey’s cities at a distinct disadvantage, when they have to handle things like market forces in order to get projects completed and leased. Then, of course, there’s the fact that those workers contribute payroll taxes to New York, eat lunches in New York and meet for happy hours in New York, which they might do here in the absence of Port Authority office projects.



We’re disappointed in the judge’s decision to not take seriously AAA’s bid to block the hike. Outside of a few internal promises to reform an agency with zero accountability, it’s the same old story at the Port Authority. And that story is really bad news for New Jersey.

