Toll Runners Also Have to Elude These Guys

As head of collections for Orange County’s largest tollway system, nothing increases Joel Bishop’s RPMs more than motorists who cheat at every turn.

Take the late-model Ferrari captured by a surveillance camera rolling through the toll plaza at Newport Coast Drive on the winding San Joaquin Hills toll road. It’s in Newport Beach, where many homes are worth millions of dollars. Yet the motorist is so chintzy that a towel has been draped over the license plate to avoid a 50-cent toll. Bishop would like to bring the scofflaw to justice, but the driver remains at large.

“No one is entitled to ride for free,” says Bishop, a determined road warrior whose personalized license plate reads, “PAYTOLL.”

Bishop is chief executive of VESystems, an Irvine company that was hired two years ago by the Transportation Corridor Agencies to help collect millions of dollars in unpaid tolls and penalties.

The TCA, a government entity, operates 51 miles of tollways in Orange County, including the San Joaquin Hills, the Foothill, the Eastern and a short stretch of Highway 133. Tolls range from 50 cents to $3, bringing in roughly $82 million a year.

Unpaid tolls amounted to $2.6 million in 1999, $2.85 million in 2000 and $1.7 million in 2001, with the number of violations fluctuating from 1 million to 1.9 million.

“The ones that are really egregious I take a personal interest in,” Bishop says. “We do a lot of research. We find out where people work, where they go and who they are.”

VESystems and the TCA place the worst offenders on the agency’s hot list, the equivalent of the FBI’s most wanted. Today, 13 drivers are members of the exclusive club. One owes $60,914 in tolls and penalties. Another $34,595. Still another is $31,624 in arrears.

The most anyone has owed the Transportation Corridor Agencies is $84,000. For at least two years the Inland Empire commuter cheated it out of four or five tolls a day.

TCA officials say the woman was finally apprehended and threatened with a lawsuit. She is now on a payment plan and subscribes to FasTrak, a system that uses dash-mounted transponders to electronically bill her account.

Bishop says he once helped track down a teacher after he received tips from three sources that she was cheating the TCA. She did not have license plates and apparently had bragged about how easy it was to beat the toll plazas, where cameras are mounted to snap photos of toll runners.

The TCA finally found her when another informant gave Bishop the vehicle identification number from her car. This led to a check at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

“She lived close to me,” Bishop said. “I started driving by the car. I would see her on the road and start following her discreetly. Eventually we got her, and her car was impounded.”

Finding chronic violators starts with scrutinizing photos from the Transportation Corridor Agencies’ enforcement cameras. They often reveal a variety of techniques designed to deprive authorities of a key piece of evidence.

A common method is obscuring the license plate with a rag or tape before hitting the toll road. Some motorists temporarily remove their plates; others stash accomplices in trunks who block the plates with their hands.

Another photo reveals an arm with a notebook in hand stretching from the lowered rear window of an SUV. Motorcyclists have adopted similar methods, extending one hand over their small rear license plates while using the other hand to steer.

But those moves don’t always work. Investigators cull the photos for distinguishing characteristics of the vehicle that might lead to an identification. They note the car’s make, along with any damage, decals, modifications and custom features. These clues can be relayed to California Highway Patrol officers who patrol the tollways.

Some drivers are so careless masking their plates that they leave some numbers uncovered or use transparent materials that fail to mask plate numbers when the photos are magnified.

Other toll violators think they will never get caught because they have kept their out-of-state plates after moving to California. The CHP recently caught one violator and impounded his car. The Arizona registration had not been renewed in more than two years.

Once a toll cheater is found, Bishop hands the case to Frank Barbagallo, the TCA’s deputy director for customer services. He is the agency’s Judge Judy or Judge Dredd, depending on what measures must be applied.

So far, no one has been arrested, although they could be, but Barbagallo has threatened some uncooperative motorists with civil court action. When there is no way out, they generally come around.

“Most of the people with the highest number of violations are really customers waiting to happen,” Barbagallo said. “I feel sorry for them, but I feel more sorry for the people who pay and have to drive next to someone who doesn’t.”

The Transportation Corridor Agencies has the power to garnishee wages, impound vehicles, put liens on property and seek civil judgments against people without the violator being present in court.

Barbagallo says the process starts with an amnesty program for first-time offenders with as many as six violations. They are eligible--and encouraged--to become FasTrak customers.

If problems persist, amnesty is no longer offered, and chronic offenders cannot re-register their vehicles until they pay their debt.

“They can’t get their cars until we come to some kind of agreement,” Barbagallo said. “I know I’ve got ‘em at that point. They’ve been laughing at us for a year and a half, and now it’s my turn.”