Agencies Lost $3.6 Million as Tollway Cheaters Coasted

About 2.5 million cars sped through Orange County toll plazas in the last year without paying and were never tracked down because of faulty video surveillance or missing license plates, costing the toll road agencies at least $3.6 million in lost revenue.

A review of toll road agency documents obtained through state public information laws shows that, in the last year, roughly half the drivers who passed through toll plazas without paying could not be identified, even though video cameras are set up to capture images of such offenders.

Transportation Corridor Agencies officials grudgingly concede that because of their inability to trace these drivers through license plate numbers, millions in toll revenues was lost.

Had toll officials been able to track down these drivers and extract the typical fines for running a toll booth, the Transportation Corridor Agencies stood to collect more than $142 million--a figure that rivals the agencies’ annual budget of $199 million. Fines range from $20 to $96 for each violation.

In the past, the contractor who handles toll collections had reimbursed the agencies for uncollected tolls--but not the much larger fines.

Although tollway officials laud the fact that video cameras are used to monitor and identify nonpaying customers along the county’s 51 miles of toll roads, they are reluctant to admit that the cameras are often foiled. The agencies’ documents, obtained through the California Public Records Act, suggest that during some months, more than half the video images were useless.

Instead of clear video images of license plates, toll officials are often left with shots of pavement, blurry pictures of plates, photos of bumpers or, sometimes, no video image at all. Older, dark-colored California license plates are particularly difficult to read, and temporary paper plates are virtually impossible to track through the Department of Motor Vehicles. In other instances, crafty toll cheaters have evaded the cameras by straddling lanes or by covering their plates. Motorcyclists have been known to place a hand over their rear plates while passing through automated plazas or booths.

Toll officials are reluctant to discuss the problem for fear of encouraging motorists to cheat. But, they say, they believe cheating and botched video images make up a small percentage of overall toll transactions.

The benefit of having unstaffed and automated toll lanes, which keep traffic flowing briskly, outweighs the money loss from violators who can’t be tracked down, toll officials said.

“Every industry has to deal with people who are trying to take advantage of the system,” said Lisa Telles, a tollway spokeswoman. “Unfortunately, that’s human nature.”

In the last year, more than 80 million motorists traveled the Eastern, Foothill or San Joaquin Hills toll roads. Based on that usage, the rate of untraceable cheaters is 3%. Telles said the fines from cheaters who are caught compensate for any shortfall.

Still, toll officials are scrambling for improved ways of snaring offenders. “All violations bother us,” said Colleen E. Clark, the chief financial officer for the toll agencies. “We don’t want to lose money. We also have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that tolls are paid.”

Until recently, the agencies’ primary contractor, Lockheed Martin IMS, reimbursed the agencies for poor-quality video images. Payments for these poor images averaged $200,000 a month or $2.4 million a year, according to Mike Leahy, director of toll operations. But now that Lockheed and the agencies have parted ways over a contract dispute, toll officials can no longer rely on these reimbursements to help offset the revenue lost to cheaters who escape detection.

Among other steps, officials have now installed additional video cameras to record images of vehicles driving between lanes. The agencies have also contracted with the California Highway Patrol to hunt down repeat violators based on the make of their car and the hour at which they are known to blow through a toll plaza.

“There are things we can do,” Leahy said. “Say there’s someone who has had paper plates on their car for six months and refuses to use real plates. If we keep getting photographs of a red Mustang, we can tell the CHP when and where they usually pass the toll, and they can keep an eye out for them.”

Recently, tollway officials announced they were experiencing a rate of toll violations more than double the national average of 2%. With violations reaching 5% a month and climbing, the agencies’ finance chief has called for a new get-tough policy on violators. But even if toll officials adopt a policy to fine violators $25 for their first offense, it would have no impact on those who cheat and cannot be identified.

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The problem of untraceable images is not a common one to tollways in other areas of the country, particularly the East Coast, but that’s only because they are just now installing such cameras. Whereas the Transportation Corridor Agencies toll roads were designed with automated toll lanes in mind--radio transponders affixed to a customer’s windshield automatically deduct the price of a toll from a fixed account--toll authorities in Massachusetts and New Jersey, for example, only now have opened such lanes.

Bob Bliss, of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, said the toll road there has a 4% rate of toll violations, but hopes to trim that in half by installing video cameras.

“In the meantime,” he said, “we just use a lot of state police.”

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Not Caught on Camera

Documents show that about 2.5 million motorists who sped through county toll booths without paying will never be caught because of faulty video surveillance and missing license plates, which means the toll agencies have missed out on more than $3.6 million in revenue. How the system is supposed to work:

1) Overhead antenna reads transponder as car goes underneath

2) Road sensor counts number of axles

3) Cameras take photos of violators’ license plates

Source: Transportation Corridor Agencies