Opinion

Um, about those toll hikes . . .

Hey, folks: It’s time to play “Let’s Scare the Heck Out of New York Commuters.”

That sure seems to be what the Port Authority has in mind, proposing off-the-charts toll and PATH-fare hikes, including some that would soar as much as 112.5 percent in just three years.

Peak-hour tolls on PA crossings, for example, would jump 50 percent, from $8 to $12, for E-ZPass users next month. Cash-paying motorists would be socked with an extra $3 charge, jacking up their tolls to a ridiculous $15 a pop, an 87.5 percent spike.

And by 2014, everyone would face another $2 hike, making tolls (sit down!) $17 for cash-payers.

PATH fares, too, would shoot up — some 57 percent, from $1.75 to $2.75.

What’s been proposed is a massive de facto tax hike — and it’s hard to conceive of a scheme that would be more corrosive of the regional economy than such increases.

It cannot stand.

But wait! It won’t.

Scarcely had the idea been floated than Democratic Gov. Cuomo and New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie announced its imminent demise.

“The Port Authority is facing financial issues, but so are families in the states of New York and New Jersey, and the answer cannot always be an indiscriminate and exorbitant increase in the cost to the taxpayer, or in this case, toll payer,” they said in a rare joint statement.

Translation: Don’t worry folks — tolls are going up, but it won’t be that bad.

Fact is, the PA oversees a key chunk of local infrastructure, including airports, marine terminals, ports, the PATH train, both Hudson River tunnels, the GW Bridge and the bus terminals in Manhattan.

Oh, and don’t forget the World Trade Center site, where a multibillion-dollar, decade-long rebuilding project — including that obscenely overpriced PATH station — is under way.

The regional economy relies heavily on these resources.

And it costs a fortune to keep them all from falling apart. While Cuomo and Christie are quite right to fret about working folks, they also need to make a case for maintaining bridges and tunnels.

Why PA Executive Director Chris Ward — who is nothing if not cognizant of his agency’s infrastructure needs — chose to propose such grotesque hikes is a mystery.

Maybe it’s a bait-and-switch, undertaken to lower the heat on Cuomo and Christie when the real hikes go into place.

If so, it’s juvenile.

The two governors know that hikes are necessary. They need to make a case for them sooner rather than later.