The Golden Gate Bridge went to all-electronic tolling a while ago. If you don’t have a FasTrak transponder, the other ways to pay are online or in person at certain “Cash Payment Locations” around the Bay Area. Or you can always mail them a check.
Rental car agencies in the area are aware of this and generally offer a way to include an electronic toll transponder as part of your service. Or you can use one of the other options.
Well, truthfully…it’s the DC area. I cleaned out everything I possibly could, including the glove compartment, so there would be nothing visible in the car, and the only things in the trunk were my cold weather clothes (I was coming from Mexico).
Not very trusting of my fellow man, I suppose, but I just didn’t want anything in the car that might cause a problem if stolen.
My SmartTag is mounted to the windshield just behind my rear-view mirror, and frankly I’ve never thought twice about it whenever I’ve left my car at Dulles. I definitely get what you’re saying, but they’re ubiquitous around here and I don’t think they’re high on the temptation list – especially an EZPass, which your average thief might not realize works with our SmartTag system. Also, it’s Dulles: technically the DC area, yes, but the 'burbs. It’s not like we’re talking about Reagan National. 
Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Ours are stickers these days, and only the very oldest (like 10+ years) ones are still the plastic gizmo velcroed to the windshield. So unless you’ve had yours for a decade, you couldn’t even take it with you if you wanted.
FYI, link to the Golden Gate Bridge page page describing all the payment options. One of several options for regular commuters is the license plate account, where you register your license plate number.
For occasional visitors who aren’t prepared to deal with it, you can just blow on through and deal with it after the fact. This page describes several options. TL;DR: They take a picture of your license plate. You can go on-line within 48 hours afterward to pay. Or, failing that, they will send the bill to the registered owner’s address, and you have 21 days to pay that without penalty.
One should hope that every all-automated toll crossing would have some kind of similar options.
Similar story here in Miami.
There are zero (or almost zero) manned or unmanned booths. Everywhere works off a windshield-mounted transponder or their spycam reading your plate. If your transponder and/or license plate already have an account with them, they debit that. If not, you’ve got a few days to log in to their website & pay via credit card, plus a small surcharge. If you don’t, that turns into a much more expensive citation.
All rental car companies have all their cars enrolled and their computers talk to the toll agency computers and it all just works.
Do the car rental companies pass on just the actual toll charge to the person renting the car, or do they add a surcharge?
I got stuck at a toll bridge in the Bay Area years and years ago, as a fairly inexperienced driver used only to “*free *ways,” without an American cent to my person. I had to pull around into the administrative complex and write a check for 35 cents.
Toll roads and bridges and so forth can be a real PITA if they’re not a part of your regular driving experience, or if you’re in an area with unfamiliar rules or options.
In theory, you could have headed back to the airport and the Dulles lanes and then circled back and taken the Dulles lanes back. As, you did just use the airport. If pulled over you could present your boarding pass as proof.
There is also Rt 7. Which at night, is not that bad.
Yes, it is illegal to use the toll-free Dulles lanes to bypass the VA-267 toll lanes if you have not used the airport.
In Portugal, where they have a similar system with no toll booths, just an overhead gantry with cameras, the hire car companies sell you (for an extortionate markup) a Viverde pass. If you don’t buy the pass (because you don’t expect to use a toll road maybe) and get a toll charge, the hire company just debit your credit card and add a service charge.
I don’t know about the freebie part but, yes, you definitely can pay online after the fact. You have a seven day grace period to pay the toll without penalty. Also, if you forgot your transponder or it doesn’t register properly, there is verification against the license plate photograph. I know for certain, because I’ve done this several times with my vehicles, where I’ve forgotten my IPass in the other one and just used the lane because I have both plates registered. Always just got credited normally. (Plus I have my parents vehicle on there, too, in case they forget their toll.)
Ouch. That’s a high level of bureaucratic asshattery to force you to write a check for less than a dollar.
Agree with this. Another confusing one is the New York Thruway, which uses a ticket system. Take a ticket from a machine when you get on, pay at a toll plaza when you get off. The toll is based on distance traveled on the Thruway. If for some reason (and I forget exactly how I accomplished it) you don’t get the ticket, they don’t know how much to charge and by policy charge you for the entire length (around $50 if I remember right).
The last couple of times I did it right, but the ticket is still a puzzle to me. It has a matrix printed on it that lists the tolls based on entrances and exits. But when I’m driving I am never able to put my reading glasses on and read the silly thing, so when I pull up to the toll plaza I just hand them the ticket and ask how much I owe. I’m sure they think I’m a speshul snowflake who is too preshus to read. LOL! (And they take the ticket, so I can’t take it home and read it!)
Surcharge for rental cars is an understatement. Try $62.93 a week from Dollar for what would cost a couple of bucks if you were able to pay cash between Miami and the Keys.
Here’s my experience. First off, I was not allowed to buy an EZ-Pass, being Canadian, although I drive to NY and Boston frequently. When I tried they told me to go to the Friendship Bridge (somewhere around Buffalo), the only Canadian EZ-Pass site. But they said (and I called to confirm this) that the pass would be canceled unless I used their bridge regularly. I never have and likely never will use it. Then my son added my car with the Quebec Licence plate to his EZ-Pass (issued by Penna). I drove a distance on the Garden State, using the EZ-Pass. One toll booth announced that no pass had registered. But they really must have checked my licence plate against their registry because my son confirmed that he was charged for the number of toll booths I had crossed.
Why can’t all these jurisdictions get together and use one system? I know Washington State has its own and I gather Texas and Florida do too. Quebec is about to start having toll roads again (having abandoned them a couple decades ago with great fanfare) and I am certain they will set up their own system instead of joining EZ-Pass. A real headache. And why is Friendship Bridge so anal about it?
I imagine because it costs the Friendship Bridge money to buy the materials for EZ-Passes and manage accounts. If you aren’t spending money at the Friendship Bridge, then what benefit are you bringing them? Yeah, it’s a stupid arrangement.
The way EZ-Pass works is that all the little agencies issue their own passes that all are able to work on each other’s networks. It’s sort of like how some libraries will let you check out books if you have a library card from another library system. Each library (or library system) manages their own membership and refreshes everyone else once every night or something. Another analogy is how you can drive in one jurisdiction with a driver’s license from another jurisdiction. If New York cops pull you over and you show a New Jersey driver’s license, they can write tickets against it.
I don’t have EZ Pass. A couple years ago I made a wrong turn trying to get to Reston Town Center and I accidentally got on the Dulles Greenway (267). The next morning I called the number I found on the Greenway web site and explained my situation. The operator told me to cut a check for the amount of the toll, plus a couple bucks service charge. I can’t remember the precise amount. Wherever it was, it was a lot less than the amount I would have had to pay for the violation.
I know. It makes renting a car in certain parts of the US a huge PITA. The typical rental car scam is to charge a “convenience fee” for every day of the rental term even if you only go through a toll booth once during the entire rental period. The “convenience fee” is not cheap either, usually at least $6/day, often more.
This sort of excess needs to be legislated against!
I thought the same until my friend worked at the cash desk at the tax office. Where he would have to deal with functionally illiterate builders coming in to pay their $100,000 quarterly tax bill.
As he explained to me, some successful business men can’t read, and you have to have a person to read the forms to them.
Worse than that here, because they don’t find out about it until the operator bills them, then they both add a stiff collection fee.
On the other hand (1) The operator doesn’t fine you: they worked out that going through legal process was costing them more than it was worth, and (2) They didn’t charge me at all when I got lost.
I got lost at the turnpike entrance, went through the tunnel, came out, turned around, went back onto the turnpike and through the tunnel to get back to where I started from. They could see both halves of the trip, and that happens to enough people that they know what’s going on.