She Feels Wronged After Expressing Her Mistake

You’ve mistakenly driven onto a toll road and you can’t get off. You want to do the right thing but there’s no one there to take your money.

That’s what Terrell Orum says happened to her. And now she’s on a mission to keep others from falling into the same bureaucratic web in which she is ensnared.

Orum and her husband were driving home to Newport Beach in July from a Riverside business meeting when their nightmare began. They were in the carpool lane of the Riverside Freeway when Orum missed the sign warning them away from the entrance to the 91 Express Lanes, one of the world’s few fully automated toll roads, she said. Before they knew it, the couple were beyond the point of no return on the 10-mile road, stuck without the cigarette-package-size transponder that would have allowed an overhead sensor to electronically debit them 50 cents for the ride. And without that transponder, there was no other way for them to pay the toll.

A hidden camera photographed Orum’s license plate, and a month later she got a bill for the toll.

Only it wasn’t just for the toll. California Private Transportation Co., which owns the toll road, had tacked on a $20 “processing fee,” bringing the total to $20.50. Orum was livid. She wrote a letter to the company explaining the mishap and enclosed a check for 50 cents. A few weeks later, the check came back with a letter informing her that after “carefully reviewing” her case, the company had determined that she still owed the $20.50.

“If you do not have a FasTrak account,” the letter said, “we’d be happy to establish one for you. Why not sign up today and save time every time you use the 91?”

There followed phone calls to toll road employees during which Orum says she was told she could request a hearing to contest, which would cost her another $100 to pay for the hearing officer.

Greg Hulsizer, general manager of the toll road company, says he can’t discuss specific cases due to legal agreements pertaining to privacy. He did, however, say that using a toll road without paying is a violation of state law punishable by a $100 fine for the first offense, $250 for the second offense within a year and $500 for each offense thereafter.

But because the company is “customer friendly,” he said, it reduces the fine for first-timers to the $20 processing fee. And because it wants more of those customers, Hulsizer said, violators who open FasTrak accounts can apply the $20 toward future tolls.

“Our goal is for everyone to have a transponder and become a customer,” the general manager said.

The only violators required to post $100 in advance of a hearing, he said, are second-time offenders. “This is the first time I’ve heard of someone saying that they had not been given the correct information,” he said. “Our employees are well trained and they all know the process.”

After months of wrangling, according to Orum, the company recently offered to waive the $20 fee if she would withdraw her request for a hearing. But by then, she says, she was way too angry to comply.

“I am outraged,” Orum said. “How many countless people have found themselves in that lane, got charged and thought that they had no recourse but to pay? I’m sort of representing all those who were silent.”

Her hearing is set for Feb. 21.

Hulsizer, meanwhile, wishes that she and other toll road scofflaws would just open accounts and become regulars. “We would prefer to get transponders into people’s cars,” he said. “We do get a lot of people who become customers this way.”

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Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County Edition, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to (714) 966-7711 or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.