Some drivers ahead of E-ZPass curve

Toll-plan users save time, cash in other states

By DAVID PATCH
Blade Staff Writer.

The Ohio Turnpike's plan to begin offering electronic toll collection by August, 2009, will provide many Toledo-area motorists with an introduction to E-ZPass, but not Mark Cisek.

He already has it.

For two years, Mr. Cisek has commuted from his Toledo home to Park Ridge, Ill., on Monday mornings and returned on Friday evenings to work a banking job in suburban Chicago. For most of those trips, he has paid his Illinois and Indiana fares with an Illinois I-Pass.

"With the sheer volume of traffic, and just the time you have to wait while the people ahead of you get their money out, there's no other way to go," Mr. Cisek said last week.

The half-price discount at every toll plaza along his route is a nice perk, too.

Starting Tuesday, electronic tolling may become attractive even to those who make Chicago trips just once or twice a year, not just the road warriors like Mr. Cisek who frequently travel there.

That's because the Indiana Toll Road will jump whole-hog onto the electronic-toll bandwagon on April Fools' Day, extending its i-Zoom system to include the eastern 133 miles of its turnpike between Portage, Ind., and the Ohio border - and simultaneously jacking its tolls up by more than 50 percent for cash payment.

An automobile trip that now costs $4.15 between the state line and Portage will cost $6.75 come Tuesday unless you've got an electronic-toll transponder in the car, and cash-paying motorists who continue west through Gary, Ind., on I-90 will pay another $1.25, up from 50 cents. The Indiana road's west end through Gary already has i-Zoom.

The $5.20 round-trip discount to Portage, or $6.70 to the Illinois border, "absolutely" makes it worthwhile to pay electronically even if one only makes the trip a few times a year, Mr. Cisek said.

With the Ohio Turnpike Commission not planning to start offering E-ZPass devices until opening its own customer-service center in May, 2009, motorists who want to use electronic tolling in other states before then will have to get them elsewhere.

Illinois' I-Pass, Indiana's i-Zoom, and the E-ZPass to be offered next year in Ohio all work the same way. A small box, called a transponder or sometimes simply a tag, in vehicles emits a radio signal with identifying information. As a vehicle passes a tollbooth, a radio receiver picks up the signal, identifies the account, and charges a toll.

Except in areas where commuter plans are offered, E-ZPass is not an annual or monthly toll pass. It's a debit account.

But it's often cheaper than paying cash tolls on roads where E-ZPass discounts are offered, and it's faster even when they aren't.

An E-ZPass works in all states that offer the service.

At most plazas, E-ZPass customers pass through a toll gate at slow speed but do not have to stop as long as the system properly reads their transponders. At all mainline plazas on the Illinois tollways, and at certain locations on other toll routes such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, express lanes allow E-ZPass users to bypass tollbooths altogether and drive at speeds closer to freeway speed - typically about 35 mph - while their tags are read.

The Indiana Toll Road will not have such express lanes when it activates i-Zoom on its eastern end this week nor does the Ohio Turnpike plan to create them when its E-ZPass system comes on line next summer.

But Mr. Cisek said that even if he has to slow down to 5 mph to go through a gate on the Indiana Toll Road or, later, the Ohio Turnpike, electronic tolling on those highways will be a welcome development.

"I really look forward to using it [in Indiana] on Friday. With the toll increase, it's going to be a mess because nobody with cash is going to know what to pay," Mr. Cisek said.

And even with no discount planned for Ohio, he said, "it's just so much easier than having to have the money ready. There's nothing worse than waiting in line."

"It gives you a feeling of great power" to skim through an E-ZPass lane past a long line of cars waiting to pay cash in a neighboring lane, agreed James Patrick, the Lucas County coroner, who pays his tolls electronically when he visits relatives in Boston and West Virginia. He plans to do the same during future trips to Chicago.

"It's really great to not have to fish for money every time you come to a bridge" in New York, Dr. Patrick said. "I've found it to be a very useful thing, and I don't travel that much."

E-ZPass itself is the trade name used by the Inter Agency Group, a multistate consortium that sets equipment standards, coordinates billing, and created the distinctive purple signs that identify electronic-toll lanes at members' toll plazas.

Thanks to that cooperation, each toll authority's transponders work at everybody's tollgates, so there's no need to obtain a different tag for each.

But not every state charges the same for the privilege of using its transponders, nor are electronic-toll discounts offered on every toll road or bridge.

Illinois and New York both offer the service without any administrative charges, while Pennsylvania charges $3 per year, Indiana charges $1 per month, and Ohio plans to charge 50 cents per month. West Virginia only offers E-ZPass to passenger-vehicle owners if they sign up for frequent-user toll plans on its turnpike.

All involve setting up an account from which tolls are then deducted. Some states allow account-holders to pay with cash or checks and replenish their E-ZPass balances when they get low, but the preferred method is for customers to provide a credit card or bank account number from which replenishment can be drawn directly.

Indiana's monthly fee is waived for those who provide a bank account for direct withdrawals, rather than a credit card for billings. Other states waive deposits on the transponders, which generally cost between $20 and $30 to replace if they are lost or stolen, to account-holders who sign up for credit-card billing.

The various authorities' fees only apply to their own customers: if you obtain an E-ZPass from Illinois, you won't have to pay Indiana's monthly fee. While that prompts some motorists to shop for the cheapest access, spokesmen for several of the toll authorities discouraged that practice.

"There is nothing to stop people from shopping states, but customer service will be more complicated if you sign up out-of-state," said Matt Pierce, a spokesman for the Indiana Toll Road Concession Co. "You should get your tag from the road where you primarily drive."

"For the greatest customer-service benefit, we strongly encourage our customers to sign up in their home state," agreed Joelle McGinnis, a spokesman for the Illinois Toll Road Authority, who added that a monthly fee for her state's I-Pass is "not out of the realm of possibilities as we move forward."

The main occasion that E-ZPass users have for contacting customer service is if the system doesn't read their tags when they go through toll plazas.

For that reason, agencies using the system ask customers to provide license-plate information for all vehicles they expect to drive on the toll roads, so that their plates can be matched with their account in the event of a misread.

Even rental cars can be added to one's account, by phone or online, for short-term use, various agencies' spokesmen said.

Agencies also encourage electronic-toll customers to affix their tags on the windshield near the rear-view mirror, in accordance with instructions, to avoid misreads. Mr. Cisek said he keeps his in his glove compartment, though, and hasn't had any problems.

Certain older-model cars have to use external transponders because of heating elements or other metal in their windshields' glass. Lists of those vehicles are maintained by the Interagency Group.

With only a few, isolated exceptions, residency does not affect whether an electronic-tolling discount is offered. The half-off pricing on the Illinois Tollways is open to all E-ZPass users, as will be the Indiana discount. New York's various toll and bridge authorities offer varying discounts to all E-ZPass users, with greater breaks for commuter-plan buyers.

Carl DeFabo, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, said his agency hasn't offered discounts so far because electronic tolling was offered as a convenience for motorists.

"We didn't want to risk having a bait-and-switch situation if we had a discount to start" but the economics didn't work out, Mr. DeFabo said. "With future toll increases, there may be less of an increase for E-ZPass customers," he added.

Joseph Balog, the turnpike commission's chairman, said E-ZPass discounts could be offered on the Ohio Turnpike in the future, especially for high-volume travelers.

"We have not finalized any policy, but that is something we've kicked around," he said Friday.

Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.