went to a state with a toll road. no attendant to make change. My choices are use the express pass or run the change taking bin. I had a bag of change I was going to take to the bank but that was by luck. What was I suppose to do if I didnt have the 4 quarters to pay.
On the Illinois Tollway, at least, they have a website you can go to, to pay a toll that you failed to pay while in transit. I think they give you a grace period of several days to do so before they start the process to send you a bill (including a big surcharge) for failing to pay.
It was IL, good to know
You should see a sign on the Illinois tollbooths with the address of the website. Here’s their webpage, with the information on what to do about unpaid tolls:
https://www.illinoistollway.com/tolling-information/unpaid-tolls
In broader terms, it depends on the state. In Colorado, many toll road entrances don’t even have a way to pay cash. If you don’t have the electronic payment option, a camera takes a picture of your license plate, and they simply mail you the bill.
The Flatlands lets you get by with 3 unpaid tolls in a 12 month period. So if you skip one, don’t sweat it, they aren’t coming after you or your registration.
Of course, the ethical thing to do if you skip one is to still go online and pay it if you remember the plaza location.
Factual answer provided already, yes? So I can share my story:
Back when I was very young (about 20) and usually broke, I had to get on the Mass Turnpike. As I approachd the toll booth, I suddenly realized I had literally no money on me. So I shamefacedly went to a manned booth and confessed. (This was circa 1979, so no web alternatives for paying and probably not much in the way of digitalized surveillance cameras either.)
A male, hulking but amiable and middle-aged African American toll booth operator looked benignly down into my preppie, white, and anxious face. “Have some CHUTZPAH girl,” he advised, chuckling. “Just…drive on through.”
I’ve always found the male/female, black/white, young/old, gentile/Yiddish mix in that one simple story to be a bit charming.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco seems to have this option too. You just drive through and it takes a picture of your plates. You have 48 hours to go to their web site and pay up. Otherwise, they send you a bill. If you pay in time, I’m pretty sure there is no penalty.
I swear, I thought all the other bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area has a similar arrangement, but now everything I can find on-line seems to say not. You can pay cash or have a pre-paid FasTrak account and that’s all the options there are, as far as I can tell.
Shit, I’m glad I found this out now.
ETA: This recent article in the San Jose Mercury News seems to suggest that a similar plan is contemplated for all the other Bay Area bridges. I swear, I thought this was already a thing.
We don’t have a lot of tolls here but the QE Bridge over the Thames allows you to pay by phone. There are no booths anymore as they decided that they were too costly and caused congestion.
Regular users set up an account which gets charged automatically, but occasional users have until midnight the day after they cross.
I had 2 instances - from Cleveland to Buffalo, and a NJ Turnpike, where the coin changer didn’t work. After feeding $1.50 into a 75-cent toll in the NJ booth with no response, I just drove through. I don’t recall any late bills, but then Enterprise would probably just ding my credit card (but still don’t recall any charges).
Seems like there’s a market for a device that flips down to cover the plate temporarily. Reminds me of the story of some kids who took a picture of a teacher’s license plate, printed it life size and taped it to one of their cars, then proceeded to drive through a number of red-light cameras.
I seem to remember some time ago that a truck driver was arrested in NY or NJ for doing this very thing - he had some kind of a cover for his license plate that he controlled with a piece of rope. If I have a chance I’ll try to look that up.
There seems to be a need for a national EZPass system that everyone would have. Maybe Canada could adopt it too. I actually have an EZPass that is registered to my Quebec licence and piggybacked to my son’s account in Boston. Once I was driving up the Garden State and as I went through a toll zone, it failed to register and photoed my plate number. But somehow it synched the plate to the Pass and charged in anyway, my son told me.
I just did this a few weeks ago when I forgot I was in a rental car and used the IPass lanes. You need to know where you enter and exit the toll road, date & approximate time of day (within an hour or so) and the license plate. The website was a lot more intuitive than I expected.
The issue, of course, is that tollways in the US are run on the state or municipal level, and each state can choose their own way to do things.
The E-ZPass system is used by most of the states in the Northeast, and several other states’ systems are compatible with it, but the tollways in a lot of states use their own systems which either (a) aren’t compatible with E-ZPass, or (b) those states aren’t interested in working on inter-compatibility.
Fiver:
This has been my experience with Texas toll roads as well. Be careful to pay the bill the first time you get it - a single late charge could be higher than the entire original bill!
The Golden Gate Bridge had had that option for many years now. I think it was around Christmas 2014 I had relatives visiting, and my Dad wanted to go visit an old friend who lived near Monterrey. So I took them on the scenic route, over to 101 via CA-37, then across the Golden Gate Bridge and down CA-1. At the end of the bridge I stopped at the old toll plaza with cash in ready to pay, only to discover that there were no longer any attendants and a sign that said not to stop (and I probably annoyed the drivers behind me by stopping). We eventually figured out that we were supposed to pay the toll online if we didn’t have a FasTrak. I think this was probably fairly new at the time.
Then last year I was crossing a different Bay Area bridge, only to realize too late that I didn’t have enough cash to pay the toll (I’d donated my last $20 to Broadway Cares after seeing Hamilton). The attendant handed me a slip of paper listing two options: 1) Pay the toll + a $25 fine either online or through the mail. 2) Order a FasTrak (which requires depositing a minimum of $25 in your account) and they would waive the fine and deduct the toll from my FasTrak account. So since ordering a FasTrak was the cheaper option, I have a FasTrak now. Even though I only go to the Bay Area maybe once or twice a year, it’s probably worth it to have one.
I have a toll bridge story. Right after my wife and I got married, we drove to our short weekend honeymoon. The car was covered in the usual “Just Married” graffiti. My wife was still in her wedding dress. We got to the toll plaza for the Richmond bridge. The lady looks at our car, looks at my wife. She calls in to her supervisor: “Can I get a free pass for the just married couple?” They gave it to us, and we went through for free.
I did this a few years ago and was unable to get online within the 48 hours. I have NM plates, so figured it might take a while to get the bill. After three months I call them, give them the plate info, and they have zero record of my car crossing the bridge. So I forget about it until a year later when I get a letter with a photo of my plate and a bill for $6. They are in no rush but they will get around to requesting their money
Since it’s against the rules, I won’t suggest something like pull over, get out & cover your plate with something (post-it, bag, t-shirt, etc.) get back in, go thru the toll, then pull over & remove said blocker. Note that the only place that I am familiar with exact-change only toll booths are at some of the more minor exit ramps in NJ where stopping really is an option.
A federal mandate will make EZ pass usable anywhere as of Oct 2016. :dubious:…but it is coming.