I’ve driven long distances and passed many toll booths in several US states. Nearly all of these places take USD cash and “EZPass”.
What happens if a person ends up at one of these booths and can’t pay? Assume good faith here - suppose the person thought that they had more cash than they actually did, they believed that the tollbooth would take credit cards, Canadian currency, checks, or something else that they DO have, they didn’t know that the toll would be so high, or they honestly had no idea that there was going to be a tollbooth.
Possibilities I can think of:
They are arrested.
Their information is taken down and they are served a whopping fine notice/ticket, but permitted to proceed.
They are denied passage through the tollbooth and forced to turn around.
They are forced to turn around, and given a fine/ticket.
The driver has to work at the tollbooth at minimum wage until they earn enough to pay the toll (unlikely).
The authorities search the vehicle and driver and seize enough property (e.g. jewelry) to equal the value of the toll.
My WAG is that it is either #2 or #3, or possibly either depending on the jurisdiction or specific tollbooth policy.
In Illinois, at the automated booths, photos are automatically taken of the plate/car. If you don’t call IDOT within a week to settle up, they send you a ticket - correction: IDOT website says you get 3 freebies before a ticket. I assume that a manned tollbooth would involve taking your info and sending the violation if you don’t pay.
#2, minus the fine part. They give you a pay-later ticket that you mail in. At the bottom, it says basically “If you don’t pay this in X days, you’ll be fined.” If you’ve lost your ticket, and that’s why you can’t pay, you pay the full rate.
ETA: I accidentally ran a toll booth when the battery died on my EZPass. They mailed me a ticket, which I contested under option #1 (“Malfunctioning EZ Pass”) and it was waived off and I paid the $8 toll that I legitimately owed. It was top of the list, so it must be common.
This happened to me in the Chicago area, where most of the tollbooths had operators to make change, except for the one on the off-ramp, which only accepted coins. I threw in what change I had and drove through. They have a way to go online and pay them their 85 cents or whatever it was, which I did when I got home. I’m not convinced that anything would have happened if I hadn’t done this, but I wanted to be safe.
In Atlanta, our toll road only costs fifty cents. If you drive through without paying, they send you a bill for $25.50, fifty cents for the toll and $25 for the fine.
In NJ at least, the mob comes after you.
</rimshot>
I can tell you that in New Jersey, most toll booths* will take a picture of the car/rear license plate as you drive through then sends a $25 (c. 2009, may have gone up since) ticket to the registered owner of that car.
For rental cars, obviously that would be Enterprise or Budget or whomever. I know I’ve signed rental agreements where they promise to bill you if you get a ticket that ends up going to the rental agency instead.
Interestingly, all of that being said it seems that NJ is still losing a fair amount in various toll evasion schemes.
I mostly mean “manned” toll booths here, in the sense that one or more of the toll lanes in that particular plaza will have someone in it. EZ Pass is very prevalent in NJ, so the lane you’re currently driving through using EZ Pass probably doesn’t have someone. That being said, there are some completely-un-manned toll booths, mostly off the more remote or less-used portions of the Parkway and Atlantic City Expressway.
Some years ago, Tom & Ray on Car Talk decided to have some fun with a caller who ran a toll gate. In the middle of all the madcap hijinks, there was a nugget of information that you’re supposed to tell the toll booth attendent (or go to the office if there’s one attached to the toll plaza) and they’ll give you a form to fill out.
Technically, it’s the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, not the Illinois Department of Transportation – they’re two separate and independent agencies. ITSHA is responsible for the tollways; IDOT is responsible for the non-toll roads.
In Ontario, the one toll roadhas no toll booths. At each entrance and exit, you drive under a frame at speed. If you have a transponder, the system logs you on and off and adds the charge to your account. If you have no transponder, it takes a picture of the rear licence plate and adds the charge to your account. If it’s never seen your plate before, it creates a new account. Bills go to the registered owner of the car.
Either way, you get a bill in the mail. The highway’s billing system is connected to the Ministry of Transport’s licencing records and the Ministry will deny you plate renewal if you don’t pay the bill. This is very controversial, because the tolls are expensive (18.5c/km!), it’s something of a sweetheart deal for the corporation that owns the road (courtesy of a prevoius government), and even the government says it can’t get out of the deal (I’m not sure I believe that; after all, you make the laws!).
Rental car? The toll gets added to your bill. And eventually is charged to the card that rented the car, after the rental company is billed by the highway company. And I suspect they add a hefty surcharge.
Out-of-province plate? The highway corporation has cross-billing agreements with neighbouring states and provinces. I’m not sure what happens if you drive with a plate that is not covered by this cross-billing agreement. And the highway’s own website is not clear about what states and provinces are covered. I’ve seen cars with Mexican plates in Toronto; would they be covered?
I’ve run into this at least 3 times. They had a form, took down my license plate number and drivers license number. In one case in MA they gave me an envelope addressed to the state and an explanation to send in something like $10 to cover the toll of something like $5. In one case I was given a slip of paper with a number to call, called it, and they had no record of the incident and told me to forget about it. I was surprised in these cases because they had no means of accepting a credit card for payment.
Ah, yes, the 407. It should be pointed out that without a transponder, not only do you get a new account created, you’re charged a video monitoring fee each time you enter the roadway, in addition to the toll. The first time I used it to try to find my hotel, I racked up over $40 in charges (damn, it’s west, not east, get off, get on, etc.).
On the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the toll-taker gives you a form to fill out to send in with the toll. I don’t think you’re fined unless you “forget” to send it back. If you exit in an EZ-Pass lane, they just mail the form to you. The Turnpike toll plazas have cameras that take photos of license plates, so the Turnpike Commission knows where to send stuff.
And the video monitoring fee is $3.60. Each time. It would make more sense to get a transponder, except that then they’d charge me $2/month whether I used it or not. As it is, I only pay the $2 account fee during months in which I use the highway. I no longer live in the GTA, and I might use the 407 three or four times per year during visits.
I’ve been poking around on the 407 site. You can sign up for a transponder, and the form has a field for ‘select your licence plate jurisdiction’. All 13 Canadian provinces and territories are represented, as well as 53 US jurisdictions (the fifty states, plus DC, Guam, and American Samoa). I’ve never seen a Guamian (?) plate, but I have seen Hawaiian plates on vehicles in Toronto. (They were U-Haul rental trucks. Go figure.) If they don’t have billing arrangements with all those jurisdictions, they certainly want to give the impression that they do.
(And I still want to see what happens if a car with Mexican plates drives on the 407. The page describing tolls states in red letters, “…a $50.00 FLAT TOLL CHARGE PER TRIP is billed to any light vehicles without a transponder whose rear licence plate is not visible to, or recognizable by our toll system.”. If there’s no transponder and they can’t read the licence plate, how would they know?
I am more interested in the following. I drive to NYC a couple times a year. Since I have no US address I cannot get an E-Z-Pass. Technically, I could from some commission that runs a bridge around Buffalo, but they say they will take it away unless you use the bridge regularly and I have no intention of ever using it. There is a sign when you come south on the Palisades that there are no toll-takers for the upper level of the GW bridge and you are supposed to leave the Parkway and drive through heavy traffic and then are stuck on the lower level of the bridge. I have wondered what would happen, with my Quebec plate, if I just drove through. Anybody know? I’d be happy to get a pass, especially from Mass (I also go to Boston regularly) since they charge no maintenance fee.
I’m just looking over their FAQ. Apparently, E-Z Pass and the 407 use the same transponder technology, but there are no agreements to let one use the other. Seems like that would be a good marketing thing for the 407. I don’t see anything that speaks of minimum bridge usage on the Peace Bridge Authority E-Z Pass site, but Canadians can get E-Z Pass transponders there. I googled E-Z-pass, and got some of the other agencies, and when I select “Canada” for a jurisdiction, they redirect me to the Peace Bridge Authority site.
The bridges and tunnels within New York City (such as the Battery Tunnel and Verrazano Bridge, not the NJ border crossings) have gates on them, and will not lift until the toll is paid. This applies to both the EZPass and the manned lanes.
A few times I reached the EZPass machine, not realizing that my EZPass account was empty. The gate would not come up until the policeman came over and I paid cash. There was no extra fine, but it was a real pain. I have no idea what would happen if I didn’t have enough cash on me.
By the way, the gate is at windshield height, so I don’t think it would be very smart to just try to drive straight through.
Here’s the beginning of the application. Select Canada. An application form opens, complete with fine print. You can select QC as your state/province of origin.
Did they tell you that there’s a minimum bridge usaqe? I can’t see anything about it.
In Florida, I didn’t have enough cash for some of the toll roads around Orlando. So they took my driver’s license and filled out a form, and they gave me a receipt with what I owed and were should I mail the amount owed.
Funny thing… in one of the tolls, they forgot to give me back my license. I went to my relatives’ house, ate, had lunch, and realized I didn’t have my license to give to the toll booth to exit the city. So after going back to my relatives, getting cash to pay for the toll, I stopped at it and asked them if they, by any chance, had a driver’s license.
Luckily, they didn’t fine me for driving without a license. After all, it was in their possession (they forgot to give it back to me)!
In the mid 80s, I was driving south on the Golden Gate Bridge, and I realized I didn’t have my wallet or any money to pay the toll (which was and still is collected only when reaching the SF side). I parked at the admin building just before the toll plaza, went inside and explained my problem. As far as I remember, there weren’t any forms to fill out. They gave me an address to mail a check for the toll and let me go. I sent the check out a couple of days later.