Toll Collection
Users pay tolls at designated plaza either by driving under a transponder antenna or by driving through a toll gate and paying cash. The cash price is twice the transponder price. Lesser tolls are also collected on entrance and exit ramps that are near the main toll plazas so that the average toll is about 2.6 cents per mile (1.6 cents per kilometer) for passenger vehicles with I-Pass. Trucks and commercial vehicles pay a higher toll, with a discount for travel during non-peak hours. The current rate structure is projected to generate $850 million in annual revenue by 2012.
Until the mid 1970s, the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway (then the Northwest Tollway) used a ticket system on the segment between Elgin and Beloit to collect tolls based upon the exact mileage traveled. Drivers were handed a Hollerith card when they entered the segment and paid a toll when they left.
I-Pass is the Illinois Tollway’s electronic transponder toll collection system that allows drivers to pre-pay their tolls. As of 2010, Tollway drivers use 3.3 million I-Pass transponders. Every toll lane on the system is equipped to accept I-Pass which can also be used on the Chicago Skyway and anywhere E-ZPass is accepted. (E-ZPass is a transponder consortium of toll road authorities on the East Coast.)
A refundable deposit of $10 and $40 in pre-paid tolls is charged at the time of purchase. Illinois Tollway offers an auto-pay replenishment option by registering a credit or debit card to an I-Pass account at the time of activation. Each month, the minimum balance and replenishment amounts are recalculated based on the average usage during the previous six months. A special program for low-income motorists allows them to obtain I-Pass units with a reduced outlay of $20.
Users choosing to replenish their account without auto-pay are responsible for monitoring their transactions and balance and must pay a $20 refundable deposit. There are various options for self-pay replenishment, including the Tollway Service Centers located at five oasis rest stops. Customers wishing to pay by check or cash can pay at the oasis customer service centers or can buy $20 I-Pass Gift Cards at Jewel-Osco.
The Illinois Tollway has implemented open road tolling, allowing any vehicle with an I-PASS compatible transponder (including I-Zoom and E-ZPass users) to continue through the toll plaza at highway speeds while those paying cash have to stop at a tollbooth. If a vehicle registered with I-Pass passes through a toll collection without the transponder, the toll amount will be automatically deducted from the respective I-Pass account. This process is called "V-Tolls" (Video Tolls). V-Tolls in excess of 10 per month result in penalties.
In 2004, the Illinois Auditor General criticized the I-Pass system, because the system failed to check whether the transponder used correlated with the class of vehicle detected at a tolling point. As a result, large trucks may have been paying the lower tolls for passenger cars. The audit reports also found that ISTHA did not send out violation notices for all detected violations and did not properly follow up when drivers did not respond to the notices that were sent.
Read more about this topic: Illinois State Toll Highway Authority
Famous quotes containing the words toll and/or collection:
“The fact that the mental health establishment has equated separation with health, equated women’s morality with soft-heartedness, and placed mothers on the psychological hot seat has taken a toll on modern mothers.”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)
“Psychobabble is ... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It’s an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)