Posted on 12/16/2001 7:30:57 AM PST by ml/nj
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.
Now, on to the bad faith ...
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.
ML/NJ
Some good reasons are to save time and help put a government toll collector out of work before their cushy pension kicks in. If you carry a cell phone the government can already track your movements. If the license plate on your car is visible the government is already auto-reading it. Some police cruisers have auto-readers that alert when the cop drives by a stolen car or if a car is associated with someone they are looking for.
NJ recently raised all the tolls and there were few complaints. I think that's because the leftist news media didn't bring it up much. They like higher taxes. NJ does have lower gas taxes to compensate somewhat for the tolls. Tolls hurt the poor harder than the rich so it has the effect of keeping some of the welfare class off the turnpike.
Wow! I wonder if you set an FR record for the most delayed response in FR history (7+ years).
The call may be quick now, or not. It certainly wasn't then. Friends who did try to call back when I wrote what I wrote told me about 45 minute waits.
ML/NJ
hope u get in this situation want to see how glad u will be to get false violation notices and pay for it. would u like to pay for my 9 violations which i paid.
how did u do that. would u like to give some info. i like to do that.
Secondly, this original article was posted less than 100 days after 9/11. Three thousand of his fellow New York / Northern New Jersey area residents were dead, Americans were dying in Afghanistan, and this guy is complaining about problems driving his air conditioned gas guzzler on superhighways going to the race track and hates to pay for toll roads?
The guys in Afghanistan at the time, or the widows and widowers from the WTC, Pentagon and Shanksville would loved to have only such problems.
Time to suck it up.
how do you do that. do you file complaint in the court .how did you come up with this amount. how do i prove i paid toll. i sent notices back just to avoid hassel and sent check for 3 violation and wrote letter explaning myself. so both checks came back telling me account close reason to return payment back. once i was ez pass customer. its also matter of principle i really do not feel like sending them extra money not to mention $50 admin fee same time i am scared don’t know what action they can take against me. i have altogether 9 or ten who know more to come. i don’t have that kind of money to $50 per charge when i do pay my toll. i don’t know how to deal with all these charges. any suggestion appreciated.
1: pay the tolls. Some toll sensors do not work well through tinted windows
2: get a lawyer
3: learn to use capital letters.
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