By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
If you’ve gotten a bill in the mail from the Cape May County Bridge Commission for an unpaid toll, you probably should pay it right away.
The bridge commission wants its money. And it’s going to take steps to make sure it gets it.
“We’ll be keeping track of this,” Karen Coughlin, bridge commission executive director, said during the agency’s monthly board meeting Thursday.
Motorists who don’t pay their bills within 30 days of receiving them will get slapped with an extra $25 “administrative fee” on top of the tolls they owe.
After another 30 days pass by, the unpaid bills will be turned over to a collection agency, Coughlin explained.
The toll is $1.50 to cross each of the commission’s bridges, the Ocean City-Longport Bridge, Corson’s Inlet Bridge, the Townsends Inlet Bridge, the Grassy Sound Bridge and the Middle Thorofare Bridge. The bridges connect the Cape May County beach towns from Ocean City to Cape May along the scenic Ocean Drive.
The bills stem from when the commission suspended cash tolls on all of its bridges from March 26 to May 19 as a precaution against COVID-19. The move eliminated the person-to-person contact between motorists and toll collectors to help slow the spread of the virus.
Now that cash payments have resumed, toll collectors are wearing masks and gloves and using hand sanitizer to protect them and the motorists who stop to pay their fares with cash and coins.
Although cash tolls were suspended temporarily, the bridge commission continued to collect fares electronically through the automated E-ZPass system. Motorists not having E-ZPass had a photo taken of their license plate while passing through the toll plaza and a bill was mailed to the vehicle’s registered owner for the unpaid fare.
Overall, cash-paying customers represent about 20 percent of the bridge commission’s traffic. The commission is looking to recover a little more than $32,000 in toll revenue that was not paid when cash payments were suspended.
So far, about $14,500 was paid by motorists within 30 days of receiving their bills. The commission is still owed about $17,600, Coughlin said.
Bills began going out in the mail in the first week of May. The bill is for the regular cash toll rate. No additional administrative fees will be charged if the bill is paid within 30 days.
There has been no strain on the agency’s finances while waiting for cash customers to mail in their payments, Coughlin said in an earlier interview.
