New Jersey must be the stupidest state in the country: I.E. Easy Pass... (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

Suit way of thinking:
Symptom. EZ Pass is costing more to maintain, than it does to abolish the toll system all together.
Cure: Raise Tolls, or cut back construction projects, when NJ roads are some of the worst in the country.. EX Pass costs $19 Million to maintain and keep running, yet they only make 13 million off of it in fines.
No wonder there are so many New Jersey jokes made by New Yorkers .

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I think you mean New Jersey "politicians". I don't think a state can be stupid...

 

[Philip Hamm]

Is this for real? Reference?

 

[Scott Merryfield]

EX Pass costs $19 Million to maintain and keep running, yet they only make 13 million off of it in fines.

What do you mean by "fines"? I thought EZ Pass was an electronic toll payment system. How do fines come into play?

Paying tolls is a very rare thing here in the Midwest. It's mostly reserved for major bridges or tunnels (except for the Ohio/Penn turnpike). I never understood why it is so prevalent in the East. The roads are certainly not more expensive to maintain than here or out West in the mountains.

 

[DeathStar1]

>Is this for real? Reference>

]

Local Radio Station broadcast it. Since the show is on to early in the morning for me, I tape it and listen to it as a whole later i nthe day. I'll try and get a real audio file of it up shortly when I hear it again..

 

[Todd Hochard]

Tolls are simply road tax.
Tolls are high on the expressways here. $1.00 to get to downtown from my house (12 miles), $3.00 to get to Disney (35 miles).
BUT, the Expressway Authority is a 100% self sufficient entity. NO tax dollars for anything. The land is bought, roads built, EPASS maintained, wages paid, 100% with Toll money collected. The roads get me where I want to go, and with EPASS on both cars (connected to my credit card- never short toll money), I can laugh at those sitting, waiting to pay their dollar.
It's expensive, but for the convenience, I don't mind paying.
Todd

 

[Brian Perry]

Illinois has its "I-Pass" system, which is probably similar to Easy Pass. The crazy thing is that they say over 40% of drivers have I-Pass and yet only 10% of the lanes are what I would call "free flowing" (exclusively for I-Pass, where you don't have to wait for other cash-paying drivers). So it often takes you longer to go through an I-Pass lane than the traditional coin-operated ones.

And I also don't think they are being enforced. I know many people who go through the I-Pass illegally yet have never been ticketed or fined. So those of us who pay are penalized.

 

[Steven K]

I was in Orlando a few weeks back, couldn't believe how high the tolls were out there to get from Orlando Intl. Airport to Disney! A dollar here, 50 cents there, another dollar here... geez...
Here in Mass we have Fast Lane, which I actually have a transponder for because it saves so much time. Plus, I get to take the Ted for 40 cents as opposed to $2 and I can take it any time.
In Mass, you have to pay a toll for:
Mass Pike (I-90)- 50 cents at AllstonBrighton, then up to
$3.10 after that
Sumner Tunnel- goes from East Boston (Logan) to I-93... $2
Ted Williams Tunnel- goes from Logan to South Boston: $2
(40 cents for local residents of South Boston, East
Boston, and the North End) and can only be used by non-
commercial and non-residents on weekends, holidays,
and after 10 PM
Tobin Bridge- goes from Chelsea to Boston.. $2

 

[Jay H]

Scott M, the fines are those people who go through the EZ pass system without actually having an EZ Pass. Supposedly the people who designed the system expected to pay for the system through catching fare beaters. But since many fare beaters aren't paying and it's expensive to go after them, the amount of money the people in charge expected to collect is actually something like 6-8 times the actual value that they did collect. Basically nowhere near the amount needed to fund the system so the people in charge are faced with a program running in the red on something they said would cost the taxpayers nothing. It's quite stupid and unbelievable that they could get away with it too.

I don't have or use EZ pass cause I'm hardly ever on the GSP , the times I do go south, i'm usually on I-287 and partly on the NJT until I-295 or if I decide to go down Rt 130 and avoid the tolls completely.

Jay

 

[Brian Perry]

That sounds a lot like the fiasco we had with our Kennedy Expressway reversible lanes. The Kennedy is four lanes in either direction, with two additional lanes in the middle that flow downtown during the morning rush hour and are reversed for the afternoon commute, so there are six lanes for the peak traffic times.

For decades, the actual reversing of the lanes was done by a guy who basically drove his pickup truck along the 8-mile stretch of reversible lanes (making sure there was no one stranded) and manually raised/lowered the gates and barriers. This cost the city about $400,000 per year, which of course sounds like a great gig for the guy(s) doing it. Well, several years ago the Kennedy was resurfaced and as part of the project, the brilliant people in charge decided to "automate" the opening and closing of the reversible lanes with computerized gates and a camera system. The cost? $15 million. In other words, it will take 38 years to recoup the cost of paying a guy to twice drive a truck 8 miles a day.

 

[Kirk Gunn]

I was headed across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge last Friday (connecting the Annapolis area to MD's Eastern Shore). There are ~ 10 toll lanes, with the M-Tag (Easy Pass) lanes being the center two lanes !!! I felt sorry for those M-tag folks that had to sit in all the traffic waiting for all those cash-only folks try and squirm their way out of the center lanes...

Usually M-Tag is the far right 2 lanes, and those folks can boogie on through. Truly amazing.

 

[DeathStar1]

>>That sounds a lot like the fiasco we had with our Kennedy Expressway reversible lanes. The Kennedy is four lanes in either direction, with two additional lanes in the middle that flow downtown during the morning rush hour and are reversed for the afternoon commute, so there are six lanes for the peak traffic times.>>

Sounds Damn Confusing...How many accidents on this road?

 

[Ross Williams]

I love living on the west coast. The only places I know of that charge tolls on the entire coast are the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge in San Fransisco. I'm sure there are others. But I've never run into them.

I couldn't believe it when a friend of mine drove to the east coast and said you had to pay tolls just to drive on the freeway. Crazy.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I couldn't believe it when a friend of mine drove to the east coast and said you had to pay tolls just to drive on the freeway. Crazy.

It's not really a "freeway" if you have to pay tolls, is it? There are plenty of freeways and interstate highways on the east coast that have no tolls.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Here's another stupid thing about it: the EZPass (NY)transponder is free, but the FastLane (MA) one is not. Therefore, since both can be used in either system, a Mass resident can by an EZPass transponder instead, and not have to pay for the transponder. Therefore, Mass loses money.

How much of this goes on I don't know, but I wish I had know about the free EZPass thing before I bought my FastLane.

I really don't understand why they're losing money. The tolls are the same, right? What's the difference how it's paid?