January 15, 1982

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to vote today to raise the $1 toll on the Triborough Bridge and four other East River crossings by 25 cents, sources close to the agency said yesterday. The increases would probably go into effect late next month or early in March. Richard Rav itch, the chairman of the M.T.A., made the proposal to raise the tol ls last September to help finance the agency's five-yearcapital impro vement program for the subways and commuter lines. If approved, tolls would go to $1.25 on the Triborough, Bronx-Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges and for the Queens-Midtown and Brooklyn-Battery Tunnels. Tolls would probably go from 60 cents to $1 on the Henry Hudson Bridge, connecting the Bronx and Manhattan, and from 75 cents to $1 on two bridges between the Rockaway Peninsula and the bulk of Brooklyn and Queens.

Millicent Fenwick, the elegant yet combative Republican grande dame of the House of Representatives, nestled her two youngest grandchildren on the sofa in her living room overlooking the snowy hills of New Jersey's fox-hunting country. An old-fashioned box radio sat nearby, a telephone was within arm's reach and logs burned briskly in the fireplace. This is where Mrs. Fenwick, who is running for the United States Senate, does much of her political work - reading, answering mail and telephoning. ''I have a total amateur approach,'' she said of politics and her career, which has made her one of the most widely recognized members of Congress. ''I have never used a television person before, and all this professionalism is not happy-making - being packaged by professionals as though you were some kind of new invention like the splash-free valve on a faucet.''

International Instructions for opposing martial law in Poland were issued by three leaders of the suspended union Solidarity who are in hiding. The typewriten leaflet called for 12 actions, including ''passive resistance'' in the workplace. (Page A6, Columns 4-6.) An account of the fighting in Gdansk in the days following the imposition of martial law Dec. 13 was given by a young worker just arrived in Warsaw. The worker is now a courier for a resistance movement. (A6:1-3.)

Cleavon Little stars in ''Keyboard,'' a new play by Matt Robinson, which opens tonight at 7:30 at the Henry Street Settlement's New Federal Theater, 466 Grand Street. Mr. Little was seen this season as the saxophonist Lester Young in ''The Resurrection of Lady Lester'' at the Manhattan Theater Club. In ''Keyboard,'' he plays a fictional musician - a once-great rhythm-and-blues singer who ignores the problems of his family as he dreams of his past. Tickets are $2.50 and $5. Information: 598-0400. HIGH-HEELED WOMEN AT 54TH ST . CLUB

The Reagan Administration has laid the groundwork for a Presidential decision to begin producing a new nerve gas for chemical warfare, according to Administration and Congressional officials. The plan includes a request for a substantial increase in the 1983 budget for s uch weapons. Senior military officials in the Pentagon long have contended that the United States must modernize its capabilities for chemical warfare as a deterrent to the Soviet Union, which Pentagon officials say has built up an effective capacity for using such weapons. In addition, the Reagan Administration has asserted repeatedly that there is growing evidence, in Southeast Asia and in Afghanistan, of Soviet willingness to use chemical weapons such as ''yellow rain,'' which has been described as a toxic chemical substance.