E Z Pass

E-Z Pass Not So E-Z in Philly

This was a letter that I wrote to the Delaware County Daily Times that was published on January 4, 2000

If you could harness the collective intelligence of all the management of the Delaware River Port Authority, you would be hard pressed to power a three-year-old's tricycle.

E-Z Pass went live last week on all of the DRPA bridges. With E-Z Pass, a commuter purchases a small electronic device and affixes it on the car's windshield. Every time the driver gets to a tollbooth, the commuter does not need to pay any toll, or even stop at the booth. The technology reads the device and charges the motorists account as he or she drives through.

Well, that is how it is supposed to work, and does on the Atlantic City Expressway and New York Thruway and every other toll road on planet earth utilizing E-Z Pass. But for the DRPA, it would be easier for an E-Z Pass commuter to stop at the booth and provide a frontal lobotomy with a rusty Swiss Army knife than get though the toll plaza.

First, all E-Z Pass lanes had a gate down. So, you could not just drive through. Then, as you sat in bumper to bumper traffic, if you weren't in the far right lane, you had to navigate through two or three lanes of tractor-trailers to get to an E-Z Pass lane. That was really fun.

Here are some suggestions for folks at the DRPA. First, think! Wake up!

Then, make the far right lane of the bridges E-Z Pass only, as soon as you get on the bridge.

Consider making the cash toll $10, and keep the E-Z Pass commuters at $3. If none of this is implemented, maybe we should all purchase Swiss Army knives. It couldn't hurt.

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