Frustrated New Yorkers are desperately trying to avoid paying the city’s new $9 congestion toll, investigating everything from license plates that flip over to infrared LED lights to blind the cameras used to catch scofflaws.

Threads have popped up on reddit.com posted by people seeking ways to evade the toll to enter Midtown, and they clearly aren’t worried about legality. One is titled “ULPT REQUEST: How to bypass NYC congestion tax?” “ULPT” stands for “unethical life pro tip.”

“Since this is ULPT, get license plate flipper (illegal af). If you get caught the penalty will be much worse than $15,” one helpful scofflaw wrote. “Remote infrared light source or RILS. It will blind the camera but look normal to FBI and local police,” wrote another, who obscured his user name.

And of course there was this very ULPT: “Start an affair with someone who lives next to your office. Sleep there on late nights, take the train.”

Others offered some other low-tech options: Put a bike rack on the back of your car, claim ignorance when the police pull you over. Change a “3” into an “8” on your plate and try the same ignorance defense. Attach some LED lights on either side of the plate, which can temporarily blind plate-reading cameras.

Then there’s the “Tinted License Plate Cover-Smoked Clear Plastic License Plate Cover” that looks like a regular piece of plastic but blocks cameras from snapping a shot.

The city already loses millions from toll scofflaws each year. In 2022, for instance, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority estimated that it had lost out on some $46 million in revenue at its bridges and tunnels due to toll evasion, Crain’s reports.

Some city officials say “ghost plates” used to avoid tolls in the past are a growing problem.

Other city officials are moving forward with new proposals that “establish clear visibility requirements for license plates, prohibiting anything — including dirt, rust, glass or plastic coverings, substances, or materials — that renders a license plate unreadable, obscured, concealed, or distorted, including rust, glass, plastic coverings or other material,” ABC7-NewYork reported. The proposals are set for a public hearing on February 6.

Yet some city residents have really drawn the short straw. People who use a parking garage on East 61st Street — which is actually outside of the Manhattan congestion toll zone by one block — still have to pay the fee because they must exit onto Fifth Avenue and drive a block into the zone before making a U-turn to head uptown.

Other redditors were more helpful — and more ethical. Some suggested packing a foldable bike in your car and parking outside the congestion toll zone, then biking to your destination. Some said with the explosion of street scooters on every corner, just jump on one and scoot. 

And still others said get over yourself. “Seriously. Unless your job literally requires a truck (i.e. you operate a bodega or a construction company) you don’t need a car in Manhattan. In fact a car is probably the worst way to get around Manhattan for most people.”