Turnpike needs help to battle scofflaws
The numbers are mind-boggling.
In an effort to get some assistance from our state lawmakers, officials at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission are naming names and releasing figures to show the enormity of the problem being caused by people who use and abuse the turnpike’s EZPass system.
EZPass allows drivers to use transponders that register tolls and send them to a credit card for payment. The problem is, some people use the EZPass lanes without a transponder, and others fail in other ways to meet their obligation to pay.
How bad is it? Well, the Turnpike Commission released figures this week showing the top two dozen commercial EZpass scofflaws owe more than $1.54 million in tolls. Ten of those companies are from New Jersey, and eight are from Pennsylvania, primarily the Philadelphia area. In total, there’s a list of about 400,000 offenders who owe nearly $50 million. According to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, half of the violations can be tracked to owners of vehicles registered in Pennsylvania.
And that is where the Turnpike Commission is looking for help from the Legislature. In some other states, turnpike operators can revoke the driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations of toll violators. That’s not the case here.
The commission is doing what it can to recoup the lost money. Cameras in the EZPass lanes can photograph the license plates of vehicles, and those who don’t pay their tolls are sent notices. When it comes to the worst offenders, the commission has filed lawsuits.
That’s clearly not working in many cases. The biggest toll scofflaw, by far, is an outfit called Green Coast Logistics LLC South of Plainfield, N.J. It has more than 7,600 violations and owes nearly $700,000. The operators of that company should not be billed. Unless there’s some major malfunction or miscommunication we’re not aware of, they should go to jail for theft.
A reporter at the Post-Gazette who tried to talk with someone at the trucking company about the toll violations got what apparently has been the same response given to the Turnpike Commission: the cold shoulder.
“We are doing all we can to collect every penny (in unpaid tolls), but it is simply not enough,” said commission Chairman Sean Logan. “Without support from state lawmakers for tougher consequences, a growing number of violators from every state will continue to cheat both the Turnpike Commission and the commonwealth as a whole.”
Some states have gates in their EZPass lanes that don’t open unless a vehicle has a transponder, but that would appear to be a last resort here, because turnpike officials believe the benefits of free-flowing traffic outweigh those that would be gained through installation of gates.
There are other options that should be considered. One would be using the existing system to immediately identify vehicles that are passing through the EZPass lanes without transponders and have state police standing by to pull them over and immediately charge them. Make the fine such that it will serve as a major deterrent to such activity. If a trucking company is involved, especially one that has a high level of unpaid tolls, pull that truck over and hold it until somebody arrives with the cash to pay all that is owed. No checks, please. Word will get out.
The commission also should have the authority, as exists in other states, to revoke the licenses and/or vehicle registrations of repeat offenders, and it should be given the go-ahead to set up agreements with other states so that out-of-state scofflaws can be brought to justice.
The commission generally has the right ideas about addressing this problem. It’s time the Legislature gave it the teeth to put the bite on those who don’t pay.