Staten Island lawmaker pitches capping toll fees as drivers get stuck with bills for thousands

Every driver should pay their tolls, and pay them on time. 

When they don’t, those small debts can explode into tens of thousands of dollars, raising questions of fairness: how much is too much? And why do so many drivers claim they weren’t warned about their exploding debt until it was too late?

CBS News New York is pressing the MTA for answers as part of our “Driven Into Debt” series. 

From $200 to $25,000

Chris Zimring is a father who lives on Staten Island and works as an officer on Rikers Island. He crosses the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge twice a day, and then will call E-ZPass every few weeks to pay his balance. 

“I call them. I make the payment manually,” Zimring said. “Everything’s done, boom.” 

In 2023, however, he got a notice from the Department of Motor Vehicles. 

“It says when you owe $200, that’s when they move to suspend your registration. So I’m like … what could it be? Two, three hundred bucks, whatever. I’ll pay it right now. I bring it up – $25,000,” Zimring said. “These are late fees, things I was never notified about.” 

Zimring said he only had one account, and he thought he was paying it off. 

“They told me that when your account goes negative, if you go through the toll again, it doesn’t register,” he said. 

Zimring’s E-ZPass didn’t refill automatically. So when his account went negative, he said the system stopped charging his tag and instead cameras captured his plate. That’s when the trips switched from E-ZPass to tolls by mail, a separate billing system. 

Zimring claims the tolls by mail notices went to an old address even though he’d updated it, and by the time he found out, the late fees from the MTA had exploded.

“Why didn’t they flag my registration for suspension when I allegedly owed them $200?” Zimring said. “They waited ’til I was $25,000 in the hole.”

“People who pay … don’t have to pay late fees”

Under state law, the MTA can direct the DMV to suspend registration if a driver owes $200 or more, or has three or more unpaid violations. So when does that referral actually happen? We asked the MTA. They wouldn’t say. 

“People who pay their tolls—unlike this driver who evaded 410 tolls and ignored 142 properly delivered notices over more than two years—don’t have to pay late fees,” MTA spokesperson Tim Minton said in a statement. 

By 2025, Zimring owed $4,288.69 in tolls. In total, the MTA charged him $36,800 in fees. That’s nearly nine times the tolls he owed. 

An MTA spokesperson declined to answer our questions about billing, notice or suspensions. 

“Why is this happening?”

Denise Pacheco handles E-ZPass complaints for Staten Island Assemblymember Mike Reilly’s office. 

“Why? Why is this happening? Why is it getting so out of hand?” Pacheco said. “And we’ve never gotten those answers.”

Pacheco said Zimring isn’t alone. 

“Almost every constituent that calls this office tells us, ‘I received no notices until I received the suspension notice of my registration.’ Can they all be telling the same story?” Pacheco said. “Why aren’t we working more with them? Why aren’t we capping the fees?”

One tolling agency has capped late fees. While the MTA charges $50 for every unpaid toll, the Thruway Authority charges just one $50 fee per month. That means while the MTA’s fees can reach tens of thousands of dollars, the Thruway Authority’s fees max out at $600 a year. 

Reilly is proposing a legislation to cap all fees, and more.

“One of the key aspects is to have the DOT state commissioner … do an audit of E-ZPass,” Reilly said. 

“They’re just raking in money from everybody,” Zimring said. “My house almost went into foreclosure … it’s just, all around, it’s bad. It’s bad what they’re doing.”

After Reilly’s office got involved in Zimring’s case, the MTA struck a deal and cut his late fees in half. For the next four years, Zimring will pay $472 a month. A problem, however, is that the MTA’s bill arrives at the same time as his mortgage. 

People in need of a settlement can contact the MTA’s Office of the Toll Payer Advocate.   

As we continue to look into the MTA’s fee system and their policies, drivers who want to share their experiences can reach out to Mahsa Saeidi by clicking here.