NEW YORK - The free ride is over for Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board members, who for decades have enjoyed lifetime passes for the agency's mass-transit system, bridges and tunnels.

Under pressure from state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the nation's largest mass-transit agency said Thursday it planned to rescind former board members' free-travel perks and restrict current members to using the privilege only for official business.

The announcement came as Cuomo cracked down on a long-standing tradition of providing free E-ZPasses - electronic toll-payment systems - for board members at the MTA and various other public agencies.

State Thruway Authority board members agreed Wednesday to stop using their free E-ZPasses.

“I think it's very important that we say to government on all levels, ‘This is a new day in New York, and public integrity is important ... and also the public perception,”' Cuomo said at a news conference.

The perk for MTA board members - many of them multimillionaires - has drawn stiff criticism at a time when many commuters are absorbing toll and transit-fare increases that took effect in March.

MTA board members' free E-ZPasses work only on the MTA's own nine bridges and tunnels, where tolls are as high as $10 round-trip, spokesman Jeremy Soffin said.

Until now, the unpaid board members also have ridden free on the agency's subways, buses and Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road commuter trains.

It's unclear how much the perk has cost in free fares and tolls, Soffin said.

All but one of the 22 current board members and 34 ex-members have E-ZPasses, Soffin said.

Some have more than one, such as former MTA Chairman Peter S. Kalikow, a real estate developer and car collector with eight of the passes.

He plans to turn them in, saying he has always abided by the law, spokesman Martin J. McLaughlin said.

The perks date at least to the 1950s, Soffin said. But after the Daily News reported on the practice Tuesday, Cuomo's office told the MTA and Thruway Authority to end it, citing legislation specifying that the agencies' board members serve “without salary or other compensation.”

“Just because it's been going on for a long time doesn't make it right,” the attorney general said Thursday.

MTA Chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger told The New York Times Wednesday that the agency would ask a court to decide whether the travel perks amounted to compensation.

But the agency concluded Thursday that “we wanted to just make a policy change,” Soffin said.

Board members are expected to give it formal consideration at a meeting next month.

The plan would let current board members keep using their E-ZPasses and fare privileges for “actual and necessary expenses.” Such costs would not be considered compensation, Cuomo said.

The MTA doesn't plan to seek reimbursements for the perks used so far, Soffin said.

Cuomo has made a point of going after questionable government freebies during his 16 months in office.

He is probing possible pension fraud at school districts and local governments across the state, saying some have improperly let outside consultants qualify for state pensions.

He also has told the MTA and about 100 other agencies to stop giving board members a break on health care benefits.

The MTA had been paying the bulk of health insurance premiums for four board members, but it has stopped doing so.

The agency's vast transit system carries more than 8.2 million riders on an average weekday.

More than 300 million vehicles a year use its bridges and tunnels, which include the Triborough and Verrazano-Narrows bridges and the Brooklyn Battery and Queens Midtown tunnels.