This has got to be a joke! A woman from Canada and a man from Long Island filing a Lawsuit against the tolls at the Grand Island Bridges?
It’s an issue of fairness and constitutionality
First the tolls should be removed, 75 years now we have been paying these friking tolls. In 1935 when the bridges were fist built the tolls were only to remain until the bridges were paid for. In 1963 the Thruway Authority was created and given possession of the bridges and the 190. The tolls were then sure to remain forever as the people feared in 1935. For 3 years the only tolls collected for the NYSTA was at the GI Bridges so from the get go we were the only ones paying tolls to maintain the thruway system.
George Maziarz and myself wrote legislation to remove the NYSTA control over the bridges and the 190, give it to the NYSDOT thereby eliminating the tolls and allow the federal funds we pay every time we get gas or diesel to pay for them. This is ridiculous and we have a bunch of cowards for legislators representing US in Albany. This legislation should have been on the floor, voted on and passed. The Governor already said he would sign it. What are we waiting for? What? Please some one tell me.
Suit questions limiting it to Grand Islanders
Two people from outside Western New York have gone to federal court in an attempt to make Grand Island residents pay more to cross the bridges serving the island.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a man from Long Island and a woman from Ontario, Canada, cries foul over the toll break that Grand Island residents get in crossing the bridges. They complain that Grand Island residents get too much of a break on their tolls, paying only 9 cents for a one-way trip that costs nonresidents up to $1.
The legal action against the Thruway Authority is a twist to all the screaming about motorists paying excessive tolls on their daily commutes along local sections of the Thruway.
And it doesn’t sit well with Grand Island officials who have battled the bridge-toll issue for years.
“I think it’s frivolous,” Supervisor Peter A. McMahon said Wednesday. “I guess I don’t understand why anyone would seriously consider a lawsuit and why the federal courts would even listen to that lawsuit.”
But a federal appeals court is treating the claim seriously. The lawsuit, filed three years ago and dismissed by a federal court in the Albany area in January 2007, has been revived by the appeals court, which overturned the findings of the lower court last week.
The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued the decision last week in a 31-page ruling on a whole array of complicated legal principles.
“We were very pleased that the Court of Appeals reinstated the case,” said Andrew P. Bell, one of three attorneys representing the two plaintiffs. “They set what seems like a tough standard, but we’re glad our clients will have their day in court.”
It’s an issue of fairness and constitutionality, suggested Bell, from the Locks Law Firm in New York City.
via Islanders’ break on bridge toll challenged : Home: The Buffalo News.
