Welcome aboard Joel Giambra! Well I sure hope he joins us with this fight, we need as many elected officials that are not afraid of the big bad thruway authority as possible to join us. There again, it is not up to the thruway authority to tell us or the politicians anything. They get their power from Albany politicians, that way they are not accountable to us, the people. They are appointed, not elected and the favorite ploy of the politicos is to sweep everything off to them, therefore blowing off their responsibility and accountability to the people of Western New York.

Here’s my plan…. Look, no more tolls and two lanes straight through and across the bridge. Thus, eliminating the bottleneck and backup. It’s that easy.

Tolls Come Down; Activists Promise More To Come

This is one traffic bottleneck that most drivers probably are not complaining about.

Motorists are experiencing a bit of a slow down through the old Breckenridge toll barriers on the Niagara section of the Thruway. Traffic is restricted to the left two lanes through the plaza while crews tear the plaza down.

Thruway driver Dale Haig praised the removal of the tolls last October, and now the removal of the barriers themselves.

“Oh, yeah, when you don’t have to pay anymore, yeah,” Haig said.

Another driver, Eric Gakodi from Tonawanda, recalled spending about $6 a week on the tolls on his regular commute to Buffalo.

According to Thruway Authority officials, traffic will be restricted to the left two lanes for about three weeks, then will be shifted to the right two lanes of the Breckenridge barriers.

“It will be about a six week demolition period,” said Assistant Division Director for Engineering Services, Douglas Tokarczyk.

Crews recently finished demolition of the Ogden toll site, though line painting will need to be completed in a few weeks.

The total cost to remove both toll barriers is $860,000.

Buffalo developer Carl Paladino, of Ellicott Development, initiated the lawsuit against the Thruway Authority which was successful in getting the tolls removed last October. He had called the tolls an unfair commuter tax.

Paladino recently sent a letter to Governor Eliot Spitzer, laying out reasons for the removal of the Grand Island bridge tolls, as well.

“In the case of Ogden and Breckenridge, we had a law from 1968 entitled The Niagara Section Toll Removal Act that our state government had just disregarded,” Paladino said. “Here, we don’t have such a law, but what we have is an abomination of policy.”

Paladino said the Grand Island bridges brought in $20.6 million in 2006, nearly twice the cost of maintenance on the structures. He also feels that local taxpayers are “insulted” by having to wait in line to pay the toll, and that this region is being unfairly “selected,” given that out of 936 bridges, the Thruway Authority charges tolls at three. They are Grand Island, Castleton on the Hudson, and Tappan Zee.

Erie County Executive Joel Giambra, who joined Paladino in his legal effort to remove the road tolls, said he may also join the Grand Island effort.

“We’ve got Albany’s attention now. We’ll see if we can keep the momentum going and make it work on Grand Island as well,” Giambra said. He said he has been having discussions with Paladino about the possibility of a lawsuit.

Tokarczyk was provided by the Thruway Authority to answer questions about the removal of the Thruway toll barrieris, but declined to comment on the Grand Island tolls.

For now, Paladino said he will focus on a “taxpayer revolt,” though he did not rule out legal action.

The road tolls had been 75 cents. It also costs 75 cents to cross the Grand Island bridge, though discounts are available for residents and commuters and those with EZPass.