I’ll agree with that and also the next step will be to eliminate the authority all together. The spending plan they have to improve the thruway is excessive and in most cases not even needed. They just want to give their union controlled construction firms more and more of our money. Bunch of crap IMHO….

In addition, he presented graphics to illustrate that while ambitious and high-tech projects are planned in the future, the authority is sticking pretty much to its historic level of infrastructure improvement. The capital plan includes more than 300 projects, including 520 miles of rehabilitated highway, 196 bridge projects, seven additional noise barriers, 56 higher speed E-ZPass lanes, and 13 new highway-speed E-ZPass lanes.

The Buffalo News: Home: Angered by toll hike, Silver calls for entire Thruway Authority board to resign
Thruway tolls will go up by 10 percent Jan. 6, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

But the speaker of the Assembly says he has had enough and is asking the entire Thruway Authority board to resign so that Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer can appoint new directors and have a free hand in controlling it.

“It’s time to give this governor a chance to put his vision into play,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, DManhattan, said Wednesday night in Buffalo.

Silver told The Buffalo News that he and Assemblyman David F. Gantt, D-Rochester, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, planned to formally request the board’s resignation today, a day after Gantt’s hearing in Buffalo on more proposed toll increases for 2009 and 2010. Although Spitzer has taken no position on the proposal, Silver said, a new board could help the Thruway realize potential that was projected but never achieved by its current administration — appointed entirely by then-Gov. George E. Pataki.

The speaker said attempts to develop canal shoreline near Syracuse by a developer who was awarded a controversial no-bid contract in 2003 typified the failure of the current board.

“This board, after that debacle, has done absolutely nothing,” Silver said. “Now, rather than look for efficiencies, they want a toll increase.

“The public has blamed [Spitzer], but, in reality, the board was not picked by him. What’s important is to give the governor the ability to shape the policies of the board.”

Thruway Authority officials were unavailable late Wednesday to comment on the speaker’s remarks.

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