Toll Road Cheaters Have New Enforcer After Them

County toll road authorities took aim at rolling cheapskates Tuesday, signing a temporary $2-million contract with a Laguna Beach firm to process and make collections on toll violations.

In a unanimous vote, directors of the Transportation Corridor Agencies awarded the contract to VESystems LLC, which will assume the collection duties once held by Lockheed Martin. The company will process the thousands of license plate photographs made of motorists who fail to pay their toll and demand payment and fines from them.

TCA spokeswoman Lisa Telles said the temporary contract is roughly $1 million less than what the agency had paid Lockheed for the job previously.

VESystems is just one of a handful of firms the TCA has hired to replace Lockheed, the agency’s former lead contractor. Lockheed and the TCA agreed to part ways recently when the engineering firm complained that it was making much less money than it had hoped to. TCA officials complained that Lockheed wasn’t aggressive enough in collecting on toll violations and was irking paying customers with poor customer service.

After agreeing to the split in October, TCA directors decided to farm out Lockheed’s previous responsibilities to a handful of new firms. Toll violation collections was the last job category that needed to be filled before Lockheed leaves the job entirely by Jan. 12, Telles said.

The TCA operates the San Joaquin Hills, Eastern and Foothill toll roads.