Orange County Tollway to End Free Ride for Motorists Today

Starting today, it’s pay or stay off California’s first toll road built since the Great Depression.

Drivers on the Foothill Tollway in Orange County will begin paying tolls ranging from 25 cents for cars to $1.80 for big trucks. The 3.2-mile segment of the road, which eventually will stretch 30 miles from the Irvine Lake area to Interstate 5 near San Clemente, opened Oct. 16 but has been toll-free for a get-acquainted period.

“I guess I’ll be one of first ones to drop my quarters in the machine,” said Lake Forest resident Maria Costanza. “I have to go to work at 5 a.m. because I’m a nurse. . . . Before moving here, I lived in New Jersey for 20 years, and there I paid tolls all the time. So I guess Californians will get used to it.”

But the Foothill Tollway is different.

It is the first in the United States to offer the AT & T “Smart Card,” a device resembling a credit card that drivers insert into a small, dashboard-mounted transponder. That exchanges data by radio with the tollway’s computer system, enabling drivers to breeze through toll plazas at freeway speeds without stopping.

The novel system is being marketed by tollway officials under the name FasTrak. But so far, fewer than 100 people have applied for prepaid accounts, even though thousands of people use the tollway daily.