Pennsylvania Turnpike adds retail network for customers to pay toll bills they receive by mail

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | June 5, 2022 | Ed Blazina

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

In an effort to make it easier for customers to pay bills they receive by mail, the Pennsylvania Turnpike is linking with a national network that will accept cash at hundreds of convenience stores, drug stores and other outlets.

The turnpike is partnering with the KUBRA Cash Payment Network to allow motorists to pay tolls or other turnpike fees at places such as 7-Eleven, CVS, Dollar General, Family Dollar, Sheetz and Walgreens, among others. The program — which includes a $1.50 surcharge for each transaction — is an attempt to make it easier for customers to pay and reduce the amount of money the agency loses to deadbeats who ignore bills by mail.

The service comes at no cost to the turnpike.

Two years ago, at the start of the pandemic, the turnpike moved up the elimination of toll collectors and cash payments by about 18 months to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus by eliminating contact between staff and customers. Motorists could either pay by using an E-ZPass transponder linked to a credit card or have a photo taken of their license plate and receive a bill in the mail.

About 85% use E-ZPass, but the rest use Toll By Plate, which historically has had a payment rate of about 67%. When cash payments were eliminated, that greatly increased the number of motorists receiving bills in the mail and the amount of uncollected tolls increased by about $24 million, from about $81 million in 2019 to just under $105 million in 2020.

Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo said the cash payment network is designed to provide an opportunity for customers who want to pay in cash or need to because they don’t have a bank account. The KUBRA network is most widely known for collecting payments for utility bills.

[no-to-illegals]

Avoiding “tolls” is a hobby have cultivated and utilized for decades

[George from New England]

Until the state absorbs all the ‘fees’ involved, I will be avoiding all tolls.

[jz638]

When they first put a toll on the turnpike, they said the tolls would fully pay for the road by something like 1975. Since that point, the Turnpike commission has become the home to absurd levels of graft, ineptitude, and corruption ... and somehow never has enough money, so they keep raising tolls.

[j.havenfarm]

There are relatively few toll roads here in northern Ca, and they’re a relatively new thing, 20-30 years (after all, CA coined the term FREEway,) but there have always been toll takers on the Bay Area bridges. They were powerfully unionized. They’re all gone, and I wonder what happened to them. It wasn’t the sort of bargaining unit to go away quietly

[GreyFriar]

I signed up for the PA Turnpike have a photo taken of my license plate and pay via a credit card a about 2 years ago. I have not had a problem with it. I looked into E-Z pass, but the monthly surcharge for Indiana where I live, makes the PA plan much cheaper, as that is the only toll road I use. And who wants to go into the Chicago combat zone on their toll roads?

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I only drove through Chicago once, on I-90, in 2007, and then just south of there in 2014 on I-80. Not sure that I want to drive into Chicago again at this time.