On the Dulles Toll Road in Northern Virginia, eastbound just past Hunter Mill Road, there’s an opening in the barrier that separates it from the free airport access road. It has a gate with a bar across the road, colored safety orange. The airport access road is free of charge, but to drive on it without actually having any business at the airport is an offense with I think 3 points on the license and a huge fine, $500 or something. But in recent years the tolls have doubled, tripled, quadrupled, making it quite expensive to take the toll road.
The gate onto the free road is meant only for buses, which have a special transponder to open it. Before the gate was installed a few years ago, they always had unmarked cop cars there to bust anyone who illegally crossed over from the toll road. The gate freed up the cops to go do something more useful than sit there all day.
At first, the gate bar was rigid and made of wood or aluminum, I think. Once in a while, about every 2 weeks, it would be broken, a sign that a car had crashed through it (probably sustaining some damage to the crasher’s car) to avoid the toll plaza a few miles down the road. And soon after it would be replaced.
But recently, the bar has been made of easily destroyed orange plastic, which probably doesn’t damage cars as bad as the rigid ones did. (I was reminded of the subject by a post from a gate-crasher in GQ.) Lately, at least 4 out of 5 times I pass it, the bar has been snapped off and the way is wide open for anyone. One, the new material is flimsy, and not much of a deterrent. Two, with Virginia’s severe budget crunch, they just plain can’t afford to keep replacing the thing when it keeps getting destroyed again almost immediately. I’ve never taken advantage of it to illegally cross over. I suck it up and pay the ever-increasing tolls. I’m just saying though that the whole arrangement is made of fail.