Court upholds dismissal of truckers' bridge-toll lawsuit

Federal law doesn't allow commercial truckers to challenge toll increases on Delaware River bridges, an appeals panel ruled Thursday.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision of a lower court judge who had dismissed a lawsuit by three trucking associations and a trucking company against the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.

The truckers sought to reduce a $2.75-per-axle fee that went into effect two years ago and re-establish an earlier $2.25-per-axle fee. They said the increase wasn't "just and reasonable" as required by the Federal-Aid Highway Act because the commission had a $118 million surplus -- almost three times its annual operating budget of $40 million.

But Judge Dolores Sloviter, writing for a three-judge appeals panel, said the law does not give truckers or other private parties a right to sue.

"The truckers' efforts to realize such a right would be best directed at Congress by pressing for an amendment" to the law, Judge Sloviter wrote.

Until then, "the state political process could be the venue that Congress had in mind for the airing of toll grievances," she wrote. "Congress intended to remove the federal government from toll oversight because it viewed the regulation of tolls as a matter better left to local officials."

The lawsuit was filed in December 2002 by American Trucking Associations Inc., the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association, the New Jersey Motor Truck Association, and Roadway Express, an Ohio company with centers in Bethlehem and Stroudsburg.