Ok, so last weekend I was in Norman Oklahoma and wanted to drive out to Red Rock canyon. Now instead of taking I-35 and I-44 around I decided to take the direct route from highway 9 straight west.
Well I’m driving along and low and behold, the road turns into a turnpike. Ok no problem. I’ll pay the toll when I get there. So I drive along and here comes the toll booth. But check it out. Suddenly there is a sign that says “Exact Change Required”. BUT their is no sign saying what that “exact change” was to be.
BTW, I only had some bills, no change. So I pull up to the tollbooth and its unmanned. No people anywhere. Plus no change machine. No credit card taker. What to do? I decided to drive thru without paying and turn around and leave (horns went off when I did that). There was a phone number so I called it and, I kid you not, it said they were closed on weekends!
I asked a local and he said those turnpikes and toll roads are always a problem in Oklahoma. He said that often you throw your money in and the machine doesnt register. Also he said that some of the Indian reservations also have toll booths and you get even more problems with those.
Now it doesnt seem to be a problem on the major interstates but it is on these smaller highways.
So warning. Be ready for problems if you are in Oklahoma and wanting to use a toll road or turnpike. Have alot of change ready.
The automated tollways are a scourge upon humanity. And free money for rental car companies.
Locals and regular travelers can get transponders or register their cars, but pity the poor traveler in a rented car. If you go through an automated toll plaza, the rental car company gets the bill. The policy of the major rental companies is that even if you register just one toll during your rental period they charge you a service fee of $15 to $20 a week for the entire duration of your rental PLUS the cost of the tolls, calculated using the highest published toll cost. For example, if the toll authority gives a discount to drivers who use a transponder, despite the fact that the car is equipped with a transponder, they charge the non-transponder rate.
I think this mish-mash of uncoordinated automated toll systems is a significant burden upon interstate travel and something needs to be done about them.
Not only that, but states should make it so that whatever e-toll system/s is/are authorized in the state must be accepted by ALL operators of e-toll in it.
Meanwhile the rental companies are all over the place with the e-toll rates: To take an example in Florida:
(a) Dollar charges you a flat $11 per day up to $55** per week** for the whole rental, as an opt-in and if you don’t then it’s actual tolls plus $15 every time up to actual tolls plus $90; but meanwhile
(b) Avis or National charge you actual toll plus $4 per day for the whole rental up to $20 per month, just triggered automatically if you go through a toll.
Florida of course has adopted for its turnpikes both transponders AND Toll-By-Plate whereby the toll cam just scans your plate and bills the registered owner, nothing honks or flashes or blocks your path. Not having to physically stop to pay tolls makes for a safer road and faster traffic flow.
At least once a year from West Texas, sometimes twice, we’d do a round trip across Oklahoma and back to visit my grandmother in Arkansas. Sometimes we’d go via Amarillo and so shoot straight across the state on I-40. Other times we’d go via Wichita Falls, go up the HE Bailey Turnpike, and catch I-40 at Oklahoma City. Once I reached adulthood, I would make the trip by myself. I can’t say I or my father ever had any trouble on the turnpike.
However, as much as I despise Texas, I would positively slit my wrists if I had to live in Oklahoma.
When I traveled down to Texas this year, I found that most of the toll roads in the Houston area had switched to an EZ Pass only system. You can’t pay to use any of these roads using cash or credit cards.
I actually wonder what happens to small towns (and all of Oklahoma) when self-driving cars become the norm. I don’t know what will happen with tolls, but the automated cars are unlikely to be caught exceeding speed limits. I travel thru OK a few times a year, and it seems half the state budget must come from speed traps.
Driverless cars will bankrupt a lot of small towns, I think.
There is conversion to one automated transponder underway, mandated by the federalgovernment
Granted they have a limited footprint, but Silvercar.com doesn’t charge anything over the cost of the toll & they rent all silver Audi A4’s to boot (hence the name). It’s smartphone car rental only; no waiting in line either.
This is an example where the government must step in to protect car renters. One serious flaw with capitalism and contracts in general is that it is easy to hide large costs or make someone sign a contract that is so long and complex they have no realistic hope of even reading the entire document they are agreeing to. In addition, since there are only a few rental car companies, in practice someone has no choice but to agree to the contract or walk. This is in fact true for nearly all of these “contracts” we private individuals must sign.
a. Don’t want to agree to the onerous non competes and other gotchas set by your employer? The alternative is generally to be unemployed, you can only renegotiate terms like this if you are extraordinarily desired and have leverage.
b. Don’t want to agree to the itunes agreement? Guess you can’t use your phone.
c. Don’t want to agree to the contract set by a hotel? Sleep on the street.
And so on. In practice, individuals have no leverage so these “contracts” are exclusively one sided.
So the government could require the car companies publish the average total cost with all taxes and fees instead of the teaser daily rental rates. Or the government could ban charging any more than the cost of the tolls. (the car company would have to roll the cost of the transponder into the cost of the rental)
I will be very surprised if self-driving cars make it impossible to exceed the speed limit.
And anyway, if the small towns want revenue, that’s what civil forfeiture is for. If you want to talk about legalized theft, that’s a far bigger problem than speeding tickets.
I spent a week in Tulsa about ten years ago. It was the longest week of my life. Hated it there. Oral Roberts University has a gigantic gold praying hands sculpture. It’s the gaudiest thing I’ve ever seen.
A significant percentage of people seem not to understand that building and maintaining infrastructure like roads actually costs money, and that the money has to come from somewhere. They will whine if you propose an increase in income tax to pay for it, but when you suggest a gas tax or a hike in car registration fees, they’ll whine about that too, and when you offer the option of a toll roads, they’ll argue that paying to drive on a public road is downright un-American.
These people will, of course, be the first to complain when lack of maintenance causes their roads and bridges and dams to crumble around them.
I disagree about cash-free tolling. With the exception of the county owned toll roads around Houston, all cashless toll facilities I’m aware of offer some way to pay after the fact with only minor inconvenience and cost. Harris and Fort Bend counties, on the other hand, rival rental car companies in the ridiculous fees they’ll force on you for the slightest oversight. But these toll road authorities and rental car companies will keep raking in the fees until they lose a class action lawsuit or are sued by a state’s AG.
Tolling interoperability has been the goal in the industry for a lot time. There is a federal deadline for all toll authorities to be compatible, but I don’t think that will be met.
One of the best things to happen with OK roads is an agreement between Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, where if you have a Toll Tag for any of the three states, it will work in all of them.
I don’t think Tulsa is that bad. I would NEVER suggest it as a vacation spot, but if you wanted to settle down, I think it’d be fairly enjoyable and inoffensive.
Also, you know, when they first put the giant hands on ORU’s campus, the engineers had a problem in that they couldn’t get the hands together. Try as they might, there was always a gap between them. Finally, someone figured out a solution:
They put a dollar bill between the hands, and the hands immediately clasped onto it.
This is coming from someone who accidentally put out ORU’s “Eternal Flame” more than once. Grew up in Tulsa, but don’t see myself ever moving back there.