Metro

Mike and Dave in gear for new tolls

Choke on this, drivers.

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Paterson both still want to charge drivers to go into Manhattan — and they each said yesterday those fees would have saved the MTA from its massive 2010 budget hole.

“I don’t think congestion pricing or those kinds of things are dead,” the mayor said in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was attending a global-climate summit, in reference to a plan to charge drivers $8 to go below 86th Street on weekdays.

Today, the MTA board will vote to close a $343 million budget gap in 2010, brought on by cuts in state funding and fat raises to transit workers.

As a result, MTA brass is considering shuttering the W and Z lines, eliminating free student MetroCards and cutting back Access-A-Ride service for the disabled.

Paterson, who earlier this year proposed $5 fees for the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queensboro and Williamsburg Bridges, said he couldn’t understand why New York City lawmakers were “up there defending the automobile owners” when tolls tanked in the Senate earlier this year.

“Those are the revenues that are now missing. That was in the original plan,” he said.

Bloomberg recalled how congestion pricing was shot down in 2008.

“But next time, come March, they’re going to have to balance a budget and I think any kind of revenue source is going to be on the table and in fact it may still get done,” Bloomberg said.