New York State Thruway Authority

Travel Plaza Revenues and Capital Improvements

The New York State Thruway has 27 travel plazas where vendors offer fuel and food to travelers under concession contracts awarded by the New York State Thruway Authority. The concessionaires are to pay a certain amount of rent each month, based on either their fuel deliveries or food sales for the month, and make certain capital improvements to their facilities over the lives of their long-term contracts.

We examined the Authority’s oversight of the monthly rent payments and capital improvements, and found that the oversight was generally adequate. However, we also identified certain opportunities for improvement. For example, the Authority was not assessing the contractual penalties for late rent payments, even though some of the concessionaires were sometimes late with their payments and two fuel concessionaires were chronically late. We also tested certain months to determine whether the concessionaires were paying the full amount of rent due under their contracts, and found that a fuel concessionaire underreported its fuel deliveries in one of these months, and as a result, underpaid its rent for that month. We recommended that certain improvements be made in the Authority’s oversight of the fuel and food concessionaires.

For a complete copy of Report 2008-S-103 click here.