As New York City's congestion toll takes effect, some drivers were spotted with license plates that had been slightly altered, potentially to avoid paying the new fee.
The toll system imposes a peak fee of $9 for vehicles entering the central business district in Manhattan between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m., which drops to $2.25 during off-peak hours.
The New York Post reported it observed a variety of tactics, many of which were low-tech, do-it-yourself methods, to conceal license plate numbers.
According to the outlet, it's unknown whether the plate modifications are directly related to the new toll, however, many of the sightings took place near the congestion zone’s perimeter in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday – when it kicked in.
The simplest strategy reportedly involved obscuring or modifying a single character on a license plate, often by either scratching out or painting over it.
The Post reported seeing one vehicle plate with the letter "L" covered up by white paint and another that had apparently attempted to conceal the letter "E" and a zero with gray paint.
Such subtle changes are often difficult for police to detect and they also make the plate unreadable to toll cameras.
If the cameras are unable to read a jerry-rigged license plate, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot charge the driver's account.
Other plates the Post spied were considerably bent or had a white streak of paint across the letters and numbers, and some drivers concentrated their efforts on one digit, altering it to make it look like another using paint or tape.
One such plate had reportedly positioned a bolt on top of the number "6" to make it resemble an "8."
There also were a number of license plates that had reportedly been coated with a translucent substance that creates a refraction effect when hit by the flash of the toll camera, making it more difficult for the machine to decipher.
At a press conference, the Post asked Democrat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to explain how the state or the MTA plans to measure the effectiveness of the new toll initiative, which is designed to pay for the transport network’s $15 billion capital improvement plan.
"There’ll be more data than you can imagine," Hochul said. "Today is the first day; I wouldn’t count today’s data. Let’s give it a few days to sink in and get a trend.
"We’re going to be analyzing the data to see what the impacts are. I’m looking at everything: response times for emergency vehicles, I’m going to be looking at the length of drive time. I’ve got a lot of data I’ll be analyzing."