Posted on 08/01/2008 5:33:00 PM PDT by Entrepreneur
More North Texans are coming forward with complaints that a collection agency hired by the Texas Department of Transportation is unfairly demanding large past-due payments for driving on the Texas 121 toll road in Denton and Collin counties.
"This is highway robbery," said Brian Wilson of Hurst, who two weeks ago received a bill for $76.60 for a $1.60 toll he incurred on a boating trip to Lake Texoma in June 2007. "This is bureaucracy at its worst. I’ll never use that road again."
Texas 121 is the region’s first all-electronic toll road. Toll payments can be made either by an automatic account such as a TollTag or by standard mail. For those paying by mail, the common practice is to wait until the Transportation Department’s Texas Tollways office sends a bill and then send a payment.
But that system doesn’t work when the bill gets mailed to the wrong address.
On Monday, the Star-Telegram published a story about Norma Bartholomew of Fort Worth, who had been contacted by a collection agency for a past-due toll that the Transportation Department had sent to an address where she hasn’t lived since 2004.
She had traveled on the road in February 2007, but never received the original bill for $1.90 in tolls, and a few weeks ago was shocked to learn that the state now wanted $109.90, including $100 in fees.
A Transportation Department official said it was a rare incident. The woman’s account was eventually cleared after she lodged complaints with the Texas Tollways office and state elected leaders.
But since then, four other readers have contacted the Star-Telegram to complain that the Transportation Department sent bills to their old addresses and — in all but one case — turned them over to a collection agency, too.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
Gosh! How on earth could such an error EVER occur?
Come to Japan . One way from Fukuoka to Tokyo will cost you $ 225 for a 900 mile trip . $ 1.90 ? Chicken feed .
But it won’t be long until we’re emulating our counterparts overseas. Do you suppose govt will not raise these taxes on travel to exhorbitant levels once tolerance for them sets in?
Sounds like you’re driving to Tokyo via the Fuku overpass.
” Do you suppose govt will not raise these taxes on travel to exhorbitant levels once tolerance for them sets in? “
In my wildest imagination I can’t imagine Americans paying $ 225 to drive from New York City to say Columbia , South Carolina . There would be a revolution ! No ?
” Sounds like you’re driving to Tokyo via the Fuku overpass. “
I have never paid it as I don’t drive . But a friend of mine did because air and bullet train tickets were sold out for the day he had to get home for an emergency . At each exit on all toll roads there is a booth where they take your dough . If you use roads other than toll ( when possible ) it’ll take you 4 times longer .
You need to vote for Obama. He said he can give you free roads by taxing the oil companies.
Or he'll tax the toll collectors and dispense government help to offset the high cost of tolls. And the most help will go to those without cars.
Better idea, ...Leave Japan.
” Better idea, ...Leave Japan.
“
Japan , while light years away from being a Utopia , it does have some cultural and other positive aspects that outweigh the negs such as the highway toll ripoff . No doubt the USA has it’s fair share of “ ripoffs “ . Take the IRS for example .
Sh!t, the postal service couldn’t find an addressee anytime, anywhere, nowadays. I mailed a letter to the county courthouse in a town of 5,000, with the street listed but not the street number. The postal service returned it. Any kid in town or any adult not employed by the postal service could have delivered that letter without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, I get countless pieces of mail delivered to my address for people who may have once lived here but don’t now, people who never lived here, and people who probably don’t even exist now and probably never have.
My complaint is that they have both forms of toll collectors on these roads; the government employees with guns, fast cars and radios, and the government employees stuck in the toll booths.
Oregon has no toll roads. Our Democrat governor is trying to get us one. Bad idea.
When I lived in Japan I was a train rider, but I've also been on that tollway as a passenger. You gate to pay $225 for a cross-country trip, and along the way you find that at each 15-gate toll plaza, only one or two gates are manned. We had a four-hour wait to reach one toll gate in particular, including a long crawl through a mountain tunnel where everyone began to worry about asphyxiation.
Sounds to me like Texans think the state could cut enough waste and inefficiency to pay for roads without raising taxes.
As a business owner who’s been clobbered by tax hikes courtesy of RINO Perry, I agree. The only difference between a Dem and RINO Perry is blame. It was a lot more fun to blame Queen Ann, though RINO Perry is purtier. But then, so is a warthog. ‘Course, the warthog is the smartest of the three.
Sounds to me like some populists in Texas think...........
So what are you proposing?
The GOP had an agenda on roads and other infrastructure which was to shift authority to the states, shift from taxes to user fees, and utilize private investors.
That has failed because the populists in the GOP have rejected it.
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