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Bill Stevens: Those for whom the toll bells will ring

By Bill Stevens, Times Staff Writer
In print: Sunday, July 6, 2008

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The state sent me a bill for 50 cents the other day.

Actually, they sent it to my No. 2 daughter, but it landed on my desk, complete with an aerial photo of her 1997 Honda, which is chugging toward its 200,000th mile. The camera zeroed in on the license plate.

At 2:17:29 p.m. on June 10, 2008, my 22-year-old daughter violated the law where the Florida Turnpike hits State Road 50 near Orlando. Either that or technology let us down. The state really doesn't differentiate. Just send the 50 cents, or else.

In truth, the woman on the other end of the phone representing the Florida Department of Transportation was very nice — if humorless. We figured she was numb from all the calls she fields from the thousands of people who get caught blowing through toll booths around the state.

Forty-two cents to mail a 50-cent citation? Forty-two cents to mail back the half-dollar?

Well, no, this was our lucky day. We could pay for it with a credit card, over the phone. Failure to pay could lead to a $25 fine, which could escalate into $165. So, we gave the nice woman our MasterCard number.

How stupid, I thought, just before thanking the column gods.

Turns out I was the stupid one.

We gave our daughter the SunPass when she started college in Orlando, the toll capital of the western world. (This is not the stupid part.) We even made sure that every time the account got low, it would automatically draw $50 from our credit card. It was the gift that keeps on giving. But we failed to take the next step, the one that led the state to send us that 50-cent bill.

Had we registered the old Honda's license plate with SunPass, we would never have heard from the state. Joanne Hurley, spokesman for Florida Turnpike Enterprise, acknowledged that it probably cost more than 50 cents to collect our 50 cents (counting credit card fees), but said it's all part of a campaign to get a better handle on toll collection.

Last year, Hurley said, the state lost $25-million in uncollected tolls, in part because it gave motorists a couple of passes before sending a warning. "You can build a lot of guardrails for $25-million,'' she said.

In the effort to crack down on habitual offenders, and to get people registered, the state decided to send notices to everybody caught going through a toll without paying. Since 7 of 10 motorists who use the tollways have transponders, making sure they are registered helps narrow down the scofflaws.

Had my daughter's car been registered, Hurley said, the turnpike folks would have simply debited the 50 cents.

This made me recall a few occasions where I drove my own car through toll gates and the transponder failed to beep, for whatever reason. I later checked my account online and found the toll had been collected — because I had properly registered my vehicle.

Better get used to the stiffer rules. Given the economy, Florida will probably never build another major highway without tolls. Fifty cents here, a dollar there.

That's a lot of guardrails.

Bill Stevens is the North Suncoast editor. You can reach him at (727) 869-6250 or at stevens@sptimes.com.