Port Authority Workers, Retirees Get Free E-ZPass
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TRENTON, N.J. — Nearly 7,600 Port Authority employees and retirees have free E-ZPass tags for all trips across Hudson River and Staten Island crossings operated by the agency.
The perk was disclosed in the Sunday Star-Ledger of Newark, which reported that the benefit cost the Port Authority roughly $1 million over the last year.
“Use of a company’s products for its employees is very standard. And the trips represent only a fraction of a percent of toll revenues,” a Port Authority spokesman, Marc La Vorgna, said in defending the practice, which he said has been negotiated into union contracts.
News of the practice comes at the same time the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is taking criticism for offering a similar benefit to nearly 3,000 employees and retirees, who have free use of E-ZPass tags on the MTA’s seven bridges and two tunnels around New York City.
The Port Authority has been offering the free tags since it instituted E-ZPass in 1997. The Port Authority also allows 1,100 PATH employees to ride the rails for free.
A New Jersey Turnpike Authority spokesman, Joe Orlando, noted that Turnpike Authority employees only get free use of their tags when they’re on the job on the Turnpike, or the Garden State Parkway.
