Toll-Road Warrior Goes on Defense

In reading your article “How to Stop Worrying and Love the Toll Roads” (June 24), I found myself impressed with what it left out.

So, the fine for missing a toll is $25, you say? I have paid about $1,000 in fines in the past two or three years, for missed tolls that probably don’t total more than $25.

If you miss a $1 toll, you now have the chance to pay the $1 only if you receive and act on the notice immediately. If you don’t, it goes up in startling jumps at specified time intervals. All of this without any recourse to the legal system. And it will affect the registration of your vehicles.

While the computer connection to the Department of Motor Vehicles acts early on transferring the fine amounts, it doesn’t act fast at all on payments. The department would not accept payment for registration until I paid a $90 fine a second time (even with proof of payment in hand). They told me I had to file a claim with the toll road authority to get my money back. I did so and waited four months for a refund.

The toll-booth setups are confusing, easy to miss and difficult to operate. You have to thread a paper dollar into a coin changer, retrieve a $1 coin from the drop box and put this coin into the basket next to the changer.

What a bizarre and difficult arrangement. I guess it cost too much to make the bill changer trigger the green light. I know several older folks who in frustration tried folding a dollar bill and dropping that in the basket. Doesn’t work. They of course received citations, and they now all avoid the toll roads like the plague.

Who can blame them? No speed trap in any sleepy little Southern town ever did a more efficient job of fleecing the unsuspecting.

This is the only toll-road system I’ve ever driven that has bypass lanes around the toll booths, making it possible to miss them if you’re not paying attention or caught in traffic in the fast lane.

Some are poorly marked, and once you drive past the entrance there is no way to undo the citation. You can get off and come back and offer any amount of money to no avail.

At one time, this combination of poor identification and obscene escalations in the fine amounts had me thinking about a class action lawsuit. One of the questions I’d ask is how much money the toll roads bring in with their Catch-22 toll-trap system. I’ll bet it’s not small change.

I am now a registered user of the toll roads and will soon have my very own transponder so that I don’t have to stop to pay. Did I do this because I learned to “love the toll roads”? Hardly. It was simple self-defense.