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Kinda over the top if you ask me.
Tollway officials are quietly attempting to add a laundry list of penalties for I-PASS users, including revoking transponders for traffic tickets and charging $25 for drivers whose accounts run dry or who forget the device.
The proposals, of which even some tollway directors were unaware, are drawing criticism from a watchdog group, which called them “ridiculous,†and a tollway reform leader, who says they “go too far.â€
Under the proposed rules:
•Get a traffic violation and you could lose your I-PASS
•Fail to properly use your I-PASS, and it may be cut off
•Let your I-PASS account go into debt and pay a $25 fine
•Forget your I-PASS and pay $25
•If you drop change near a toll basket, it belongs to the tollway, and you could face a $75 fine for picking it up.
The new penalties were found in a 46-page document of rule changes submitted to a lawmaker panel charged with overseeing state agency rules.
There was no debate on these new rules at the tollway board in October, and members told reporters they were merely voting on minor changes.
Not.
The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules has three months to approve or disapprove the proposals.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 2:28 am
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“Tollway officials” know all about these bizarre rules but “tollway directors” do not. How many layers of “mis-management” does Blah-Blah have there? Or is CMS running that one, too?
$75 fine if you pick up some dropped change? Obviously, they know the kids insurance program is going to be way more expensive than the declared $25 million. GASP!
Or maybe they need a new revenue stream to finance the “home mortgage for illegal aliens” scheme. One way or the other, Blah-Blah will stick it us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us. And stick it to us.
Comment by Rele Tahrd Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 6:06 am
The Toll Authority is a good example of government at its worst:
1) They are a dictatorship.
2) They have the technology to ENFORCE EVERY ONE OF THEIR RULES 100%.
This is the wave of the future for all of Illinois, people. Technology will allow the government to oppress us in ways we can’t even imagine now….A $75 fine for picking up change you dropped?
Wait until they start using their cameras to detetct people not wearing their seatlbelts, talking on their cell phones, driving cars deemed ‘unsafe’, speeding, etc. And they know exactly who to bill because of your transponder. And of course, you will have no legal recourse, because part of using the tollway is agreeing to abide by their rules, which state you can’t challenge the assumptions made by the tollway.
My advice: if you are a tollway user, figure out a way to register your vehicles out of state (preferably in a state far from Illinois) that will slow them up when they try to find you.
Comment by Sheesh Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 7:02 am
Oh goody! More rules and regulations designed to scare more trucks off the tollway and onto Rt. 41 in Lake County! Nothing like compounding an already serious and dangerous problem!
Oh goody!
Louis G. Atsaves
Louis G. Atsaves
Comment by Louis G. Atsaves Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 7:22 am
“Fail to properly use your I-PASS, and it may be cut off”
Oh, ouch. I hate it when that happens.
Comment by shelbyville Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 7:30 am
Open Road Scamming. Wonder why the Gov hasn’t talked about these ideas at the press conferances.
Comment by Dozer Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 8:03 am
As the Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet wrote, “Abuseof power comes as no surprise.”
(Translated from “a small billboard near the Amsterdam train station.”)
Comment by Cal Skinner Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 8:08 am
[Carr]:
Them clothes got laundry numbers on them. You remember your number and always wear the ones that has your number. Any man forgets his number spends a night in the box. These here spoons you keep with you. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box. There’s no fighting in the building. You got a grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any man fighting in the building spends a night in the box. First bell’s at five minutes of eight when you will get in your bunk. Last bell is at eight. Any man not in his bunk at eight spends the night in the box. There is no smoking in the prone position in bed. To smoke you must have both legs over the side of your bunk. Any man caught smoking in the prone position in bed… spends a night in the box. You get two sheets. Every Saturday, you put the clean sheet on the top… the top sheet on the bottom… and the bottom sheet you turn in to the laundry boy. Any man turns in the wrong sheet spends a night in the box. No one’ll sit in the bunks with dirty pants on. Any man with dirty pants on sitting on the bunks spends a night in the box. Any man don’t bring back his empty pop bottle spends a night in the box. Any man loud talking spends a night in the box. You got questions, you come to me. I’m Carr, the floor walker. I’m responsible for order in here. Any man don’t keep order spends a night in…
[Luke]:
…the box.
[Carr]:
I hope you ain’t going to be a hard case.
[Luke]:
[Smiles, shakes head]
Toll Authority needs less Carrs (har har) and more Cool Hand Lukes!
Comment by Cool Hand Luke Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 8:27 am
It looks like Goudie was right after all.
Comment by jimbo Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 8:59 am
I have a solution to these potential penalties…simply place a “blagojevich for governor” bumper sticker on your car, and you’ll be home free!
Comment by Josh Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 9:23 am
But I balanced the budget without a tax increase. RB
Comment by zatoichi Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 9:27 am
i agree with sheesh, oppressive government at its worst. come on. how many fines have to piled upon a person. so many i can’t keep track. $30 if you are late with a bill, $30 if you don’t have overdraft protection for a checking (which on those who have good credit in the first place can take advantage of). So what does that mean for the “Broke recent college grad”; fines on top of fines on top of fines. Oh yeah!! In addition to the fees for operating a motor vehicle and the tolls that one must pay the tollway authorities want to impose these $25 fees that will be deposited to a state fund that will eventually become a victim to a “fund sweep”.
Comment by tapped out Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 9:45 am
I wonder if the fines will have “Courtesy of Governor Rod Blagojevich” boldly printed on them. Everything else Tollway related does.
Comment by Bluefish Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 10:18 am
Stopping to pick up change is stupid and dangerous. The daily litany of jack-assery is amazing. Backing up at the plaza, weaving in and out at 85 mph+, holding an I-pass in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Enough of them have tried to kill me. You couldn’t pay me enough to be a State Cop on the Tri-State. I’ve got no problem with hitting the morons with fees or making them go through the pay lanes. Don’t like ISTHA? Don’t use the Tollway. I can’t wait to hear the screaming when everyone in the State is paying four bucks a gallon to cover the increased road taxes for “Chicago” highways.
Comment by HappyToaster Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 10:50 am
Chicken Little ran into Henny Penny.
“What’s wrong?” asked Henny Penny.
“The Sky is falling! The Sky is falling!” Chicken Little replied.
Comment by Gassius Powers Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 11:59 am
Just a little story to share regarding the tollway. Not being from Chicago, I’m pretty clueless as to the special lanes you can drive in during rush hour and this IPASS thing. My 86 year old uncle who was born and raised in that area apparently is too. He drove to southern Illinois for a funeral and called when he got back home to tell me that he made it down and back just fine but was a little concerned that there was no one in the toll booth to take his money. Furthermore, there were no toll booths! I prodded him a little more and finally figured out that he was definitely in the wrong lane and had blown through three of these areas going down AND back. When I figured it out and told him what he had probably done, he said “Oh the hell with it, when they catch me, I’ll just give ‘em my driver’s license. I don’t need to be driving anymore anyway.” Yeah, that was a real understatement considering he was falling asleep at stop signs. But the joke is that he’s now dead and gone and he never heard from the State nor has any of his children. So much for fines. Rest in peace Uncle Paul.
Comment by LittleEgypt Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 12:16 pm
These comments are truly pretty stupid.
With open road tolling, a good thing, the opportunity for a-holes to just skip the tolls is high, so the penalties should be high. Why should anyone have a problem with that?
Comment by Anon Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 12:32 pm
Are you calling Little Egypt’s deceased uncle an a-hole? Sheesh.
Comment by anon Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 12:39 pm
Anon - you really shouldn’t have called LittleEgypt’s deceased uncle an a-hole. That was uncalled for. It is tasteless to speak ill of the dead. Didn’t your mother raise you with any values?
Comment by Concerned Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 12:44 pm
Anon 12:32 - I was very concerned for my uncle getting on the freeway at his age but you don’t get through to an 86 year old very easily. And I might add he was a very law abiding citizen, a distinguished WWII vet, and was mortified when he finally figured out what he had done. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that perhaps your posting was aimed at every posting before yours. I can assure you that I’ve read many postings here and I can recognize an a-hole when I read the posting. I can assure you my uncle does not fall into that category.
Comment by LittleEgypt Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 1:12 pm
I was in Iraq Sept. 2004-Mar. ‘05, and I was surprised when I returned to Illinois and saw that the tolls were doubled while I was gone.
How is the Tollway Board of Directors chosen? If the members are appointed by the governor, that should be another reason to vote against Blogojevich, if he chose the majority of the current members. In order to get I-Pass, someone needs a credit card, and many poor people can’t get credit cards. The people who pay the higher tolls are the ones who can least afford it. Democrats say that they care about poor people, but, if any Democrats helped implement the toll increase, that proves that they don’t care about the poor.
Comment by PhilCollins Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 1:30 pm
Are they talking 1 traffic violation or 4? If greater than 2 I can see the point. The fact is, we have a lot of very bad drivers out there, keeping them off the tollway is a nice idea. I know, 3 is supposed to be the magic number for getting your license pulled, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way.
And stopping to pick up change? Maybe if it’s 2:00am and no one’s around, but if you’re doing it during rush hour, you’re just asking to get squished, which will cause a backup in traffic–the very thing meant to be avoided by the IPASS.
I would like to see them catch speeders with IPASS. Not your average guys going 65MPH on 88, but the folks going over 70 and over.
Comment by cermak_rd Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 3:45 pm
If you toss change into the bucket, you aren’t in an I PASS lane, there is very likely a long line behind you. No one will squish you.
GB Rod got a lot of cook county votes last time. Wonder if he will this time, as he takes EVERY opportunity to screw the suburbs?
Comment by Pat Collins Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 4:24 pm
My husband and I were behind a guy in a pickup truck at a toll plaza. The truck driver threw his arm toward the toll basket like he was throwing in money, but it was obvious he didn’t. There was a tollway worker standing about 10 feet in front of the basket watching the cars go through. My husband yelled at the worker through his open window, “He didn’t pay!” The tollway worker shrugged his shoulders and made no attempt to look at the guy’s vehicle, let alone his license plate. Why the heck was this worker dude standing there watching cars?
Comment by Puzzler Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 4:46 pm
IPass transponders can be purchased for cash at Jewel and there is a program for the poor.
They aren’t going to send out Blagos goons for an ocassional run-through or an 86 year old man who didn’t get the concept.
Comment by HappyToaster Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 4:49 pm
I refuse to have an IPASS. I pay cash and hope like hell I don’t have to use the tollways at all. Sucks that they’ve doubled, but I smoke too, so I’m used to getting screwed. And I love the “anti-taxers” out there who demand government services without being willing to pay for them. This is a “user” fee system, and I’m not sympathetic until I’m a user.
But when I’m on the tollway, it’d be nice if there was less traffic congestion, no litter and potholes got fixed before I hit them. The way smokers see it, at least some small percentage of the tobacco tax goes to health care or anti-smoking efforts (supposedly at least). If you want a quick way from Bolingbrook to New Lenox, it’s going to cost some money to build and maintain. Downstate doesn’t want the road fund to have to maintain tollways, so it’s a question of who else pays. As draconian as these rules sound, it really isn’t going to affect the vast majority of us. But it will, theoretically, help the ISTHA users.
Besides, isn’t anyone here from Chicago? Seen the recent CTA fares and their new technology (what are you supposed to do with a farecard with 50 cents on it)? Ever heard of permit parking, wheel taxes, parking fines/the boot? Have you ever been booted? When you understand how much revenue Chicago makes off parking “enforcement,” you shouldn’t be surprised that the tollway has adopted aggressive revenue enhancements. So far, ISTHA hasn’t proposed seizing vehicles.
Plus, in Chicago, even when you pay your vehicles taxes, you still can’t park in the street if someone else put dibs on a spot.
Comment by 47th Ward Friday, Dec 16, 05 @ 5:10 pm
Leave it to the bureaucrats to take something simple and easy to use, and mess it up.
Comment by The Colonel Saturday, Dec 17, 05 @ 6:29 am
The City of Chicago is missing out on an opportunity to leverage i-pass technology. You could use them for voluntary revenue generation and traffic management thru parking fees.
A large multi-level garage can put an i-pass sensor at the entrance, and you
drive in and out without fishing for change. Just pay by mail or EFT monthly.
This could work great for on-street parking; forget regular meters and meter-readers, instead a car with a sensor just drives thru the neighborhood, automatically scanning and timing each i-pass. Or you put those sensors on CTA busses that are circulating on the streets all day and night anyway. People without i-passes could still use existing meters, but would be stuck with constant rates. i-pass users would be encouraged to i-park with more favorable rates.
the i-pass computers would know if you were parked in front of your own house, and that would be free. Anyone else parking there would have to pay a fee on a sliding scale. Handicap zone parking could self-enforce by fining you for parking there
if you aren’t registered as handicapped by SOS.
Winter parking rules could be automatically enforced. Ballpark-area parking could automatically charge appropriate rates for residents versus visitors and vary the rate based on if there is a game on that day.
If you wanted to control cars and trucks, etc for purposes of air pollution control or congestion reduction, like they do in London now, you can add a surcharge automatically for entering downtown
on bad air days or whatever. The electronic signs on the highway and the shadow traffic radio reports and weather reports would tell you: “it’s a high-pollution day today, cars entering the city will be charged an extra 15 cents today, and downtown parking will cost an extra dollar per hour.”
Brave New World, Big Brother, yeah, you could look at it that way. The technology is neutral by itself; it depends on the people using it if it would be abused to invade privacy or do other bad things. But it could also be used to positively change our bad habits, to raise revenues that could be applied to improving the air quality and better funding mass transit, etc.
Comment by techno-geek futurist Saturday, Dec 17, 05 @ 10:32 am
I grew up in Chicago and return regularly to see family. As I read the responses in this thread, the choice of tollways/rush hours vs. 5-10 minutes to work with free parking makes my small town terrific.
Comment by Zatoichi Sunday, Dec 18, 05 @ 8:17 pm
Puzzler, why don’t you mind your own business. How would you like some stranger bothering you at your job and telling you what you should and shouldn’t be doing. Maybe monitoring toll scofflaws is not part of his job; maybe he didn’t have a pen and paper handy to write it down; ,maybe he didn’t see the incident and doesn’t jump just because crazy shouts out at him during work. Should the toll workers drop everything they are doing and chase down a car just because some goody two shoes tattle tail tells them some other driver skipped a toll? Better idea…why don’t you just sit at the side of the toll plaza with a pad of paper and write down anything you think anyone might be doing wrong! Then you can dutifully and promptly turn it over to the toll authorities, or officials, or whatever they are. What a good citizen you would be then!!
Comment by Oh, please... Sunday, Dec 18, 05 @ 10:07 pm