Sep 5, 2007 8:25 am US/Eastern
State Commission To Propose Open Tolling System
by Joe Shortsleeve
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
The state is weighing a plan that would allow you to pay your tolls without stopping or even slowing down, but there are some potential dangers in this new system.
WBZ has learned that a state commission will propose an open toll road tolling system. That means instead of stopping to pay a toll, or slowing down so a scanner can read your EZPass or Fast Lane transponder, all you have to do is keep driving along at the same speed.
Here's how it works. Each car is equipped with a transponder. As it passes under those special arches, the mileage is recorded and the toll is deducted electronically from your account.
"Think that over the next generation, I think that is what we are going to see across the country," said Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, who is on the State Transportation Commission. "Collecting tolls through the new technologies will be less than it costs than when you have toll collectors and barriers."
In fact, industry experts say more than 2,000 cars an hour can pass through an open road toll, compared to just 400 through a fully manned toll.
"You have to trust them to actually get the accounting right," said Harold Hubschman, who led a failed referendum drive to eliminate all turnpike tolls.
He's not just worried about faulty billing. "We have a certain expectation that we have privacy in this country and in this Commonwealth, and they shouldn't just be able to start monitoring us just because they need money for a road."
And critics are also concerned this type of system, which is easier to build than an entire toll plaza, could open to the door to even more tolls, like along Rt. 93.
If the open road tolling system does become a reality, we wouldn't all have to go out and buy one of these transponders. In the states already using them, drivers still have the option of paying at a manned toll booth.
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