The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is proposing toll hikes for people trying to get to Manhattan and to the region’s three airports. By way of excuse, officials glom onto the nation’s infrastructure crisis, citing “half a century of neglect and inaction” on physical assets such as bridges and transit. Yet the PA is an unwitting example of the country’s real crisis in building: poor priorities. The agency has plenty of money; it’s just been spending it all wrong.

Come next January, the PA, controlled equally by the governors of New York and New Jersey, wants to raise tolls for drivers crossing the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln or Holland tunnels, as well as fares on the PATH and the JFK airport AirTrain. Peak car tolls on the bridge and tunnels would go to $13.75 from $12.50; the AirTrain fare would get jacked to $7.75 from $5.

Before last week’s board meeting, PA officials spun these hikes as ­essential to critical investment in roads, airports and transit. Executive Director Rick Cotton cited ­“unprecedented investment in our region’s infrastructure,” asking drivers and riders to “provide needed funding.”

Indeed, the PA is upping its 10-year plan to invest in core physical assets by almost $5 billion, to $37 billion. It wants to build new rail links to both LaGuardia and Newark, each at an estimated $2.1 billion. And it’s in the midst of full redevelopments at all three of its major airports, costing $7.4 billion in PA funds.

Yet the PA should be able to pay for these projects without asking commuters for more.

We don’t normally think of government entities earning profits. Yet the PA’s main spheres of operations — roads and airports — are so profitable that they almost print money.

Consider: In 2018, the PA’s bridges and tunnels made $918 million in profit, nearly $1 billion, on $1.7 billion worth of revenues. Airports made a $700 million profit on $2.8 billion of revenues.

This is enough to make substantial investments in new assets: $1.6 billion in yearly profits could easily support $16 billion worth of new borrowing and help subsidize money-losing mass-transit operations such as the Midtown bus terminal and the PATH system.

There’s nothing wrong with subsidizing transit: People taking the bus or the train are people not stuck in traffic, making more room for drivers on the roads.

But the PA has a huge problem, the result of nearly two decades worth of bad decisions in the ­aftermath of 9/11. Its World Trade Center complex — including the Oculus, the winged transportation hub that was supposed to cost $1.4 billion and instead cost nearly $4 billion — is losing about $400 million a year.

That’s more than the PA will reap in higher toll and fare revenue: Toll and fare hikes will bring in $235 million a year.

A big part of the problem is debt. A decade ago, the PA owed about $14.5 billion. Today, that’s $25.1 billion, largely due to the nearly $8 billion it borrowed to complete the new World Trade Center.

Annual payments on this debt are up, too, to about $900 million a year, twice the level of a decade ago.

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It may seem silly to focus on the past — there’s nothing we can do, now, to undo the mistakes that then-Gov. George Pataki made about rebuilding the WTC more than a decade ago. And perhaps mistakes were forgivable in the ­aftermath of the terror attacks, which clouded everyone’s thinking.

Even so, the story of the WTC is the story of New York’s repeated mistakes. The state and city continually insist on subsidizing real ­estate — the Oculus is essentially a high-end retail mall, when the last thing the city needs is more retail space — at the expense of the transportation infrastructure that supports real estate.

It makes no sense, in particular, to hike the price of the JFK AirTrain ride to $7.75. The AirTrain at JFK should be free; the only reason for the charge is a jurisdictional dispute between the PA and the New York-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Many of its nearly 21 million riders, if they arrive to this last leg of airport transportation via the MTA’s subway or the Long Island Rail Road, have already paid. Now, the combined price for the train and subway for a group of four will be $42, making that $68 Uber ride tempting.

If the PA wants to connect higher tolls to costs, it shouldn’t hike the AirTrain fee — and instead charge people $7.75 to visit the Oculus.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of City Journal.

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