Removal Begins on Verrazano-Narrows Toll Booths

MTA workers began dismantling the long unused toll booths on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge yesterday in an effort to ease traffic jams for Brooklyn-bound drivers. The toll booths will be removed by early 2011 as part of the $2.5 million project. Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro compared the effort to remove the toll plaza to President Ronald Reagan’s call to then-Soviet Russia to tear down the Berlin wall, the Staten Island Advance reports.