Bridge Chairman Says New Fine Intended to Save Money, Not Make It

Eighteen months after implementing E-ZPass on the Newport Pell Bridge, the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority says usership of the electronic monitor system has reached a level three times higher than what was originally anticipated.

According to chairman David A. Darlington, RITBA currently has 72,000 E-ZPass account holders, with 100,000 transponders. Initially, a consultant to the group had estimated that they would issue 25,000 transponders within the first two years of the program.

Now nearly two years later — and after a few adjustments — Darlington says that most account holders have adapted to the switch from tokens just fine. Presently, there are about 27,000 E-ZPass transactions each day. According to RITBA, approximately 100 of those transactions do not process correctly because users are not properly mounting their transponders. Thus, came the announcement last week that RITBA would start fining those offenders $2-per-axle should they require the toll booth operators to manually open the gates. The fine goes into effect this Wednesday, Sept. 22. Darlington insists that the new fee is not a way to make extra money, but is simply meant to urge those who aren't following the rules to get on board with everyone else. Compliance would also help the authority work toward its goal of reducing the number of staffers to that of the pre-E-ZPass days.

"Our wish is not to collect a lot of $4 fees," Darlington said on Friday. "Our wish is that people will mount their transponders, and then we can reassess our staffing levels."

When RITBA implemented E-ZPass on the Pell Bridge in December 2008, Darlington says the authority added additional booth monitors to help travelers make the switch from tokens to an electronic monitor-based system. Now, every time the topic of reducing staffing back to pre-E-ZPass days is brought up, he says the authority is told one of the activities eating up workers' time is dealing with the travelers who haven't properly mounted their transponders.

"One of the things that stands between us is this issue," he said.

Darlington says "timing and placement" are two factors that are to blame for transponders not working properly at the toll booths. The chair says that not only does the transponder need to be mounted on the windshield beside the rearview mirror, but that it also has to be registered by the antenna as it approaches. Those who have simply been waving the transponder, he said, sometimes don't hold it up quickly enough, thus missing the opportunity for the antenna to read it. While the idea has been raised to broaden the spectrum for the antenna, Darlington said this is tricky since increasing it much more could prompt the antenna to pick up the transponder of the car behind you as well.

Darlington notes that RITBA was "the last in the country"  to install E-ZPass, namely because the majority of its travelers were already using tokens. But the problem with the token system, he said, is that the baskets and mechanics that operated the system were falling apart, and parts were getting harder and harder to find.

"We were having to get parts from Australia at one point," he said.

Now, the number of people using E-ZPass is comparable to the number who were using tokens. RITBA is currently at a level where 81 percent of its travelers are E-ZPass users, compared to 19 percent who use cash.

Adjusting the toll plaza to accommodate the demand is a work in progress.

Darlington said the toll lanes, built long before E-ZPass was implemented, are too narrow to allow travelers to pass through at a higher speed than the 10 mile-per-hour limit currently in place. The gates, he says, rise at a speed of 15 miles per hour. To allow drivers to travel through faster, Darlington says RITBA would need to rebuild the toll plaza, something they'd eventually like to do to make E-ZPass lanes more open.

"That's a budgeting issue, a planning issue," he noted.

To those who say RITBA needs to remove the gates altogether, Darlington says doing so would just make travel over the bridge more expensive, since it would likely require installing a million dollar camera system to capture the license plates of those who drive off, then adding additional staff to process the collections.

"The gates make sure 100 percent of those who go through have either paid by E-ZPass, paid by cash, or made some other arrangement with us," he said. "Otherwise they can't go forward because the gates are in the way. It's part of our process, and keeps us from adding yet more staff."

Darlington says he hopes the number of people who are causing workers to open the gate manually will drop from 100 a day to about 20 in the coming weeks. He said toll booth workers have been given the velcro strips needed to mount transponders, should a traveler ask for them. The strips are also available at the E-ZPass trailer.

"Our wish is not that we get rich as an entity on additional fees," he said. "It's to get people to put the transponders on their windshields and have the gates open as they go through. I'm sure folks would prefer not to spend time with our folks, so it's easier for everybody. It's more cost-effective for everybody."