Vehicles with fake, covered or missing license plates glide through cashless tolls, haunting the city’s balance sheet
Ghost Cars and Unpaid Tolls Leave New York Chasing Vehicles That Officially Do Not Exist
NEW YORK – The city is being haunted, and the apparitions drive Nissans. Advocates and reporters have spent years tracking what are known as ghost cars, vehicles whose license plates are fake, obscured, bent, sprayed or simply absent, allowing them to pass under toll cameras without a trace. Public radio’s transportation desk has covered advocates fighting ghost cars with illegal license plates, and a community roundup cites a newspaper finding that deadbeat drivers racked up five billion dollars in unpaid tolls in four years, with the switch to cashless booths suggested as a cause.
“Five billion dollars,” said Constance Whitlock, lead investigator at the Queensboro Plaza Paranormal Parking Authority, a civic group that photographs suspicious plates. “That is not evasion. That is a second transit system, made entirely of people who are not paying for the first one. They pass through the bridge like spirits. The camera flashes. It captures a leaf. A leaf, taped over the number. The bill goes to nobody. Nobody does not pay.”
Known Manifestations
The Authority has classified the most frequently sighted types:
- The Paper Phantom: a temporary tag from a state the driver has never visited, expired in 2022
- The Leaf: seasonal, organic, always exactly covering two digits
- The Flipper: a plate on a hinge that retracts at the toll like a shy animal
- The Smudge: a strategic application of mud in dry weather
- The Tinted Cover: legal to buy, illegal to use, sold at every gas station
- The Bare Bumper: no plate at all, driven with total serenity
“The Bare Bumper is the one I respect,” Whitlock said. “No tricks. No leaf. Just a man and his decision.”
How Cashless Tolling Changed the Game
When toll booths had attendants, a car without a plate at least had to make eye contact. The cameras that replaced them are faster and never sleep, but they bill by plate number. No number, no bill. Enforcement now depends on police pulling vehicles over one at a time, an approach the Authority compares to “bailing out the East River with a coffee cup, while people keep driving through the cup.”
A survey of 500 drivers at a Queens gas station found that 84 percent pay their tolls, 79 percent are furious at those who do not, and 11 percent asked the survey taker where one might purchase a leaf. One respondent said he had the same temporary plate for three years and considered it “temporary in the sense that life is temporary.”
The Honest Driver’s Lament
The resentment is sharpest among those who pay. “I get a bill if I am one day late,” said a plumber from Bayside whose E-ZPass is linked to a card he checks weekly. “They add a fee. Then a fee on the fee. Meanwhile a guy in an Altima with a plate from the Republic of a place that does not exist goes over the Whitestone twice a day for free. I have followed the rules my entire life and I have nothing to show for it but a statement.”
Enforcement Sweeps
Officials stage periodic crackdowns at bridges and tunnels, seizing vehicles and issuing summonses, and announce the totals with some pride. The Authority applauds these and notes the arithmetic. If each sweep recovers a few hundred cars and the debt is five billion, Whitlock estimates the matter will be resolved “around the time the columns are replaced.”
The Plate Marketplace
The supply side is robust. Fraudulent temporary tags are sold online for less than the cost of a single bridge crossing. Covers and sprays are marketed as protecting a plate from “glare.” A vendor at a flea market in the Bronx told the Authority he sells the covers strictly “for privacy,” then asked not to be photographed, for privacy.
Proposed Remedies
Lawmakers have floated higher fines, registration holds and technology that identifies a car by its shape. The Authority has its own suggestion, which is to bring back one human toll collector per crossing, not to collect money, just to look disappointed. “Shame used to be infrastructure,” Whitlock said. “We tore it out with the booths.”
A Sighting in Astoria
The Authority’s most discussed case involves a black SUV seen weekly on the RFK Bridge with a plate that changes. Members have photographed it wearing tags from four states and, on one occasion, a dealership frame with nothing inside it. Whitlock keeps the photos in a binder. “We do not know who he is,” she said. “We know he owes roughly the price of a kitchen. He waved at us once. It was chilling.”
Britain Has Its Own Spectres
The phenomenon is known in the United Kingdom, where cloned and doctored plates slip past cameras on a daily basis. The London Prat’s London satirical news motoring section told of a van in Barking whose plate was written in marker and “spelled a rude word, legally.” Its English satirical news on number plates advised New York that the only cure is a traffic warden with nothing to lose.
On Thursday night a gray sedan crossed the Triborough at 11:40 with a maple leaf fixed neatly to its rear plate. It was October. There were no maples on the bridge. The camera flashed. Somewhere a computer generated an invoice addressed to a tree. Bohiney Magazine paid its toll and received a late notice anyway.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/