E-ZPass Sucks

This is a tale of bad faith, or possibly fraud, on the part of the government which collects highway tolls here in the northeast. But for those outside the northeast, I should probably explain first what E-ZPass is. And before I do that I should also explain that we are routinely stopped while driving on our highways here by highwaymen demanding tribute. The highwaymen here call the tribute "tolls," but a rose by any other name ... you know. If I want to drive from my home in New Jersey to Belmont Park on Long Island, about an hour away, I must pay $11 to $13 tribute during the course of my round trip.

It's not just the money that is stolen from me. They steal my time too. It is not uncommon to have to wait a half hour to pay a fifty cent toll to leave the New Jersey Turnpike. Even a person who makes minimum wage loses $3 every time this happens, but to the people who whine about the minimum wagers that time is worthless.

Under the guise of making things better, the highwaymen have come up with a new system they call E-ZPass. Drivers request and receive transponders linked to their credit cards, and optionally to their license plates too. Cars equiped with these transponders can drive through special lanes which can detect the transponders without stopping. (Usually there is a speed limit of five to 15 mph to drive through.) Of course "special lanes" don't just materialize by themselves, especially on roadways leading to bridges and tunnels where real-estate is scarce. "Special lanes" are created from lanes where cash had formerly been accepted. It is so bad that on one recent trip through the Queens Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan on a Saturday evening, it appeared to me that there was only one lane accepting cash.

Fortunately (?) for me, I had already acquired an E-ZPass transponder so I did not have to find out how long the poor people on that line had to wait to use the tunnel and, in fact, the growing waits to pay with cash is what drove me to get my transponder.

I had resisted E-ZPass for as long as I could. I don't like the idea of an electronic record being made of my comings and goings. I'm not doing anything I shouldn't be doing. I just don't like it. I think most Freepers will understand. I also believe the entire system to be illegal. One of the legal principles of our monetary system is a concept known as legal tender. Legal tender is that which must be accepted by law for goods, services, or debts. In the United States, one must accept Federal Reserve Notes, just as if they were the equivalent gold or silver coin they pretend to be. Refusal to accept legal tender voids the debt. Paper money is so ingrained in our psyches that one has to reach for a history book to read of times where merchants would accept only gold or silver, and they would refuse to accept paper claimed to be equivalent. When the government would force the merchants to accept the paper, it would hardly have tolerated a scheme where the merchant said he would accept the legal tender if the purchaser would just cool his heels for half an hour while some low level clerk figured out how to account for the payment, but gold and silver was accepted immediately. The E-ZPass scheme is no different.

Back in October, shortly after I received my E-ZPass transponder, I drove down to Virginia from New Jersey. The tolls begin as soon as one gets on the Garden State Parkway and they don't stop until he gets through one of the Baltimore tunnels. All of the highwaymen, about ten in each direction, now accept E-ZPass. One of the places that accepts E-ZPass is the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I don't cross it very often. I don't recall what the toll is. I don't even recall if it is collected in both directions.

Last week I received a "Notice of Toll Violation" on a piece of paper bearing logos of both "E-ZPass" and the "Delaware River and Bay Authority." They tell me, "Your licence plate was recorded by the system for violation(s) listed below. Our records indicate that your vehicle used the 'E-ZPass Only' land without a valid E-ZPass account or failed to pay the required toll in a staffed lane. In addition to the toll, a $25 administrative fee has been imposed for each violation listed below."

Now I guess their equipment failed to register my transponder on my return trip. It is completley within their ability to have matched my license plate to my E-ZPass account and have sent me a note that they were charging my account an extra $3 because they detected this mistake on the part of their equipment.

Instead they pretend that they tracked me down through the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles database which matches my license plate, my address and me. Of couse they have all of this information in their own, presumably smaller database which is probably where they got the information from anyway. They even have a record of my having passed through the toll barriers just before and after the one in question, duly recorded by their equipment and entered into their database. I guess they just forgot to look. In their notice to me they never consider the possibility that I might have one of their transponders even though I would guess that the ratio of "violators" who have an E-ZPass transponder and weren't detected to those who are actually trying to beat the toll is quite high. But some government fool thinks this is a fun new way to exact tribute from the little people.

If there's some lawyer here on Free Republic who wants to take these people on with the intent of dismantling the whole system, I might be willing to make myself a test case.

"I don't like the idea of an electronic record being made of my comings and goings. I'm not doing anything I shouldn't be doing. I just don't like it"

I live on Long Island and this is the reason I refuse to get EZPass. BTW, recently I have experienced very little or no wait time at the cash only toll booths.

I had a 'light flash' on a I-Pass lane (similar to your EZPASS). It lit up the back of my car, indicating that my I-Pass did not get deducted. No fault of mine -- my I-Pass was properly mounted and fully charged with money. If they try and play some silly game, I will pitch the biggest fit they have ever seen.

Oh yeah, I'm sure many here have EZPass and never have had a problem. Don't worry, eventually you will. And then you won't be dealing with a company that you're dissatisfied with. You'll be at the mercy of the government....and they'll be NOTHING you can do about it.

The EZ Pass monthly statements can also serve as a handy record of when and where your spouse has traveled throughout the day.... :-)

If a person has to keep track of a spouse like that, they have much bigger problems than tolls.

If this is all you have to bitch about, stop bitching and be glad you have what you have.

Although it may seem trivial, this is a much bigger problem than most people realize, and has the potential to expand throughout other aspects of life if we're not careful.

If you think this is bad, just wait until a National ID is imposed on all of us.

Well, this is sort of a regional ID, and in some ways more invidious than a national ID card. No one says their detectors only have to be placed only at toll barriers. But some here think it's silly to worry about the government knowing whatever it wishes to know about us. They want to make it easy for future Clintons to blackmail whomever they want to blackmail whenever they feel the need to blackmail them.

ML/NJ

Summary: E-Z Pass is a risk to anyone who uses it.It does not tell you if it detected the transponder.

Yes, it does. You have to wait until the stoplight turns green, which indicates that the transponder has been detected.

Hire a Lawyer!

That's exactly what the lawmakers intended. The lawmakers are all lawyers.

If out dear lawmakers had our best interests at heart, they would see that the most economically efficient thing to do would be to make the roads free, which would result in higher productivity and a larger tax base. But they are scheming lawyers, a.k.a. middlemen, a.k.a. moneychangers, a.k.a. f@#$ers.

Republik of Connecticut

At least Connecticut had the sense to remove the tolls on the turnpike and the Hartford area bridges.

ML/NJ

My big rig is charged $26.00 to cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge, $30.00 to enter NYC from the G.W., and about the same to use the Triborough. EZ Pass is convenient for me as it eliminates the need to carry SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS in cash when I am dispatched into the northeast. EZ Pass is coming to the Illinois Tollway system shortly and it is currently being used on the PA Turnpike as well. Eventually it will become the universal toll collection device and for those of you worried about being tracked I guess it means more worry. So qwitcherbitchin and go back to paying with greenery or stay off the toll roads and pump a few extra gallons of petrol to compensate for the extra miles driving out of your way.

Last spring I inadvertently drove into the EZpass lane coming off the Tappanzee bridge. No place to put money. No one came to my aid. So I took off, half expecting to see a flashing red light in the rear view mirror. No hot pursuit. Never got a notice either.

Being that I'm a hotheaded ex-boxer, I did the most logical thing I could think of; I punched the wire reinforced safety window that the government slob was behind. Hard enough that it "spiderwebbed" the glass

You are spidering plexiglass with a single punch?

I wanna set you up in a bout with RaceBannon. RaceBannon is a big tough Marine, 6 foot infinity and 250+ of muscle, so this should be interesting. I wanna organize it and promote it: "The BigKill in FreepVille."

I wanna wear my hair like Don King and say "Only in America" all the time.

What makes you think they only have these systems in the Northeast ???? They're everywhere, dude.... Thanks for the explanation nonetheless.

With the exception of Florida, you would be hard-pressed to find a toll road or toll bridge in the southern United States.

I wonder how many accidents have been caused by the craziness at the toll booths caused by E-ZPass as vehicles jockey from lane to lane trying to figure out which lanes are cash and which are not. All it takes is one semi in front of you, and you have no clue. I recently had to make an expedition into Jersey, and opted to avoid the Parkway, which would have been much simpler and faster, and negotiated a spiderweb of 2 lane back road. It was a much more pleasant journey, though, as long as one overlooked the poorly marked roads and roads that changed names seemingly at random. I saw sights that I would never see otherwise, like the World's Largest Rock Museum and some very picturesque junk yards.

What makes you think they only have these systems in the Northeast ????

In 1991 I made a USA road tour with my family. We hit 30 states plus Ontario, and drove just over 8000 miles. We got as far west as Las Vegas (omitting California because we had made a separate family trip there earlier that year). I thought it might be interesting to collect various items as trip souveniers and so I started a toll receipt collection. It wasn't much of a collection. After I left New York State, I think I paid one toll to reneter the US north of Detroit, and then single tolls entering and leaving Chicago. That was it. I never paid another toll.

That's why I explained things the way I did. There's a reason why folks in LA call them "freeways," you know.

ML/NJ

You have to wait until the stoplight turns green, which indicates that the transponder has been detected.

Not quite accurate. This is how some E-ZPass booths work. Here in NJ, I understand that if you are detected it says "EZPASS PAID" or some such, and if you are not detected it just says "GO." They don't want people slamming on their brakes with another victim following closely behind. When one drives on roads outside his own normal driving area there is no way to know how the system will react, if it reacts at all.

ML/NJ

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