In 2019, the first Pennsylvania toll booths started to change as the Turnpike Commission switched from a mix of manned stations and machines to a new, hands-off system.
It started years earlier with the E-ZPass devices that let drivers roll through while a transponder was read and an account charged. The next step was a new process that replaced people with pure electronics. Instead of a person or even a machine that accepted quarters in exchange for raising the bar at the booth, the commission would now rely on “toll by plate” for cars without E-ZPass.
Sure, there is a certain ease to it all. Don’t have $3 in quarters? Just drive through. The system will photograph your license plate, look you up and send the bill — at much higher rates than E-ZPass — to your home for you to pay at your convenience.
What could go wrong?
Well, in the ensuing two years, the Turnpike Commission has found out what could go wrong. In short, a lot of people could get those bills and throw them in the pile with junk mail.
The Associated Press obtained an internal turnpike report through a Right-to-Know Law request. That report showed 11 million rides in the last year generated no income for the cash-strapped commission.
It turns out that toll-by-plate drivers paid $124 million in tolls last year — but $104 million went unpaid by others not using the E-ZPass.
”We take this issue very seriously. It is a big number, there’s no question,” Chief Executive Mark Compton said. “But we, as an organization, are leaving no stone unturned in the way in which we’re going after that leakage.”
But is that true? It seems that one very obvious stone hasn’t been touched.
If the problem with toll-by-plate is that almost half of the people being billed for it aren’t paying the bill, it doesn’t look like a program that works.
Maybe that’s because a bill sent to your house is easy to push off during a pandemic, and in an era of automated billing. Maybe it’s because people are conditioned to paying tolls on the spot; when the bill arrives weeks after the journey, it seems like a mistake. Maybe people think they can get away with ignoring the bill.
And maybe it’s that the Turnpike Commission has been trying to balance the budget by gouging the people using toll-by-plate. In January, when the new year was rung in with the annual toll increases, E-ZPass users saw their costs rise by an average of 6.7%. Toll-by-plate driver costs went up 51%.
That is not just distributing the cost. It’s deliberate. Compton said at the time the difference was intentional, to place the burden on those who “choose a pricier payment option.”
But they didn’t choose it. The Turnpike Commission did. And now the commission is finding out that convenience has some unexpected costs.
— The Tribune-Review/TNS
