I wrote yesterday about our friend Marilia’s going home to Brazil last week. One of the things she needed to handle was returning her E-Z Pass tag, and I volunteered to do that for her after she left. I’ll be putting it in the mail today.
That got me thinking about just how great E-Z Pass is. Remember when you had to sit in long lines at toll booths, breathing in exhaust fumes? On some trips it felt like you spent more time waiting to pay a toll than you did driving. Jennifer and I were relatively early adopters of E-Z Pass, so we often had the exhilarating experience of sailing through a toll both in the dedicated E-Z Pass lane while hundreds of other drivers waited to hand their money to a human attendant. It was our custom to cry out “EE-ZEE PAAASSSSS!” as we cruised through.
Now, of course, almost no one doesn’t have an E-Z Pass tag, and they’re accepted in almost every toll lane.
There’s only downside to E-Z Pass that I can see. Drivers have lost visibility into how much they pay in tolls. Back when they had to dig into their pockets and pull out cash, any small toll increase drew howls of protest from commuters. Off all the revenue sources available to state governments, I’m guessing it was one of the most difficult to raise.
Nowadays, toll increases are much less obvious. The cost may be posted but most drivers probably don’t give it much thought. I haven’t researched this, but I’d be willing to bet that tolls have increased a lot more in the years since E-Z Pass became ubiquitous than they did in the same number of years prior to its implementation.
But I find it hard to get too worked up about that. I still remember having to sit in mile-long lines waiting to pay a toll.
EE-ZEE PAAASSSSS!