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Jan
11
Report: Catching Toll Cheaters Key To Illiana Expressway Success
Filed Under Electronic Toll Collection, Illiana Expressway, Illinois | Leave a Comment
A Illinois news report suggests that the proposed Illiana Expressway’s creation might be influenced by the ability of the Illinois Toll Road Authority to catch toll cheaters who abuse open road tolling lanes. Illinois’ Toll Road officials don’t know how much money is lost to cheaters, according to the Daily Herald.
Writes Joseph Ryan of the Daily Herald:
Tollway officials announced last month that they would look at building a Route 53 north extension, the West suburban Prairie Parkway, the O’Hare western bypass and the south suburban Illiana Expressway.
They also are considering tolls on the Eisenhower Expressway and raising fees during rush hour to discourage congestion.
The success of all these projects hinges on Open Road Tolling, which eliminated backups caused by cars lining up to pay their tolls in favor of electronic charges. If the electronic system that catches toll cheats in I-PASS lanes isn’t sound, experts say, the public may find it that much harder to accept the expansions officials envision.
“This will really erode public confidence in (the tollway’s) ability to carry out what they are supposed to do,” said Joseph DiJohn, director of the University of Chicago’s Metropolitan Transportation Support Initiative.
“It will make it very difficult to get public support” for future projects, he added, if the problems aren’t fixed.
Jan
2
iZoom Doesn’t Always Play Well With IPASS
Filed Under Electronic Toll Collection, Indiana Toll Road, iZoom | 1 Comment
Since Macquarie Infrastructure Group Cintra is likely to be the company that will run the proposed Illiana Expressway — it makes sense that they’d be interested because they run the Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road — I’m posting some of my gripes in the Illiana Expressway blog instead of over at Region Life.
EZ-PASS Interoperability issues:
Drivers get stuck in the iZoom lanes and not because they are foolish and not paying attention.
There still seem to be some interoperability issues between I-PASS transponders and the iZoom system where it takes time for the Indiana Toll Road’s iZoom system to get word from the Illinois Tollroad’s I-PASS system that there is money in the account.
I’ve had my I-PASS tag read “invalid tag” or “low balance” or something similar even though I know there is money in my I-PASS account because I’ve checked Illinois’ GetIPASS.com website before traveling. I haven’t figured out the lag time, but today my I-PASS account successfully recharged about five hours before I traveled on the Indiana Toll Road and discovered the electronic toll RFID device wasn’t valid on the iZoom system.
Was the delay because of the new year?
I don’t know if it is an issue on Illinois’ or Indiana’s side, but it is something that should be fixed because it would explain why every so often drivers are stuck at a barrier waving their arm I-PASS in hand hoping that it will be read by the iZoom system. Some of those drivers stuck behind the gate legitimately thought their transponders would work properly in the iZoom system.
Also, it was frigid today — I wonder if that could have been causing problems?
I’ll have to see next time I travel on the Illinois Tollway if my IPASS transponder is working correctly.
The GetIzoom.com website requires users to disable all pop-up blocking:
I have several different toolbars that block popups, in addition to Firefox’s own pop-up blocker. Having to go to the option panels of all of those programs to turn off popup blocking before being able to read iZoom’s FAQ is silly when Illinois’ IPASS website doesn’t require the same.
Never fear, I fired up Internet Explorer and disabled pop-up blocking and was able to read everything. But, it was a pain to have to switch browsers so that I wouldn’t have to fiddle around with control panels and options to allow pop-ups where information in a FAQ could just as easily been displayed without pop-ups.
Requiring users to shut off pop-up blocking software is a hassle that could dissuade someone from digging into the iZoom site or force them to give up and call the more costly toll free number.
