In New York State, we are over burdened with tax. When we have to pay a toll, the toll is a tax ontop of other taxes I have already paid. Therefore I avoid toll roads in New York whenever possible.
I made a similar pledge in Florida: avoid the toll roads. What I learned is that it is impossible to get anywhere in a practical and timely matter without paying a toll.
Paying tolls on Florida highways in a pain. You have to pull into a toll plaza, wait in line, and either exchange money with a toll booth operator, or throw exact change into the booth. Both options make a long jounery that much longer.
Florida, like many states, has an automatic toll paying system. Florida calls it the Sunpass. And with Sunpass, you can fly through the toll booths, usually at highway speeds!
We decided to give Sunpass a try. The morning before heading to the east coast, we went to a CVS Pharmacy and purchased a Sunpass for $5. We registered the Sunpass to our car and it's license plate, then deposited $20 into our Sunpass account to pay for future tolls. We affixed the sticker to the windshield near the rear view mirror. Everything looked perfect... Except for the fact that we missed the part of the instructions that said it would take 24 hours before the pass worked at all toll booths.
With our Sunpass attached to our windshield, we headed to the coast.
I blew through several tolls that apparently didn't read my pass. I didn't understand the warning lights and everything. There was another toll where I got into the wrong lane and was blocked by a median to get into the correct lane, so, I blew through a lane that had a red light indicating the lane was closed.
When we were done with the trip, we used our cell phone app to look at our account and found nothing had been charged. I was really concerned I would get $100 fines for every toll booth I blew through.
Luckily, that didn't happen. Cameras took pictures of my car and captured by license plate. They used the license plate to find my registered Sunpass and simply charged my sunpass the correct amount. After that success, I continued to use the Sunpass for several other trips and became less concerned about the cost of the tolls, and more interested in the convenience.
Interestingly, cash the tolls are, like, $1, $1.50, etc. But if you pay with a sunpass, you get a discount that makes the tolls a little more affordable.
The speed of the sunpass is impressive. Often, I was traveling at speeds not allowed by the law of man and it took a perfect picture and charged my account. There were several toll booths where I had to pass through at 25 mph. At one of those booths, it read my sunpass, processed the charge, saw that my account was low, and lite a "Low account balance" sign at the toll booth, all within a fraction of a second
I am very impressed with the Florida Sunpass system, and I will be a customer from now on.
I blew through several tolls that apparently didn't read my pass. I didn't understand the warning lights and everything. There was another toll where I got into the wrong lane and was blocked by a median to get into the correct lane, so, I blew through a lane that had a red light indicating the lane was closed.
When we were done with the trip, we used our cell phone app to look at our account and found nothing had been charged. I was really concerned I would get $100 fines for every toll booth I blew through.
Luckily, that didn't happen. Cameras took pictures of my car and captured by license plate. They used the license plate to find my registered Sunpass and simply charged my sunpass the correct amount. After that success, I continued to use the Sunpass for several other trips and became less concerned about the cost of the tolls, and more interested in the convenience.
Interestingly, cash the tolls are, like, $1, $1.50, etc. But if you pay with a sunpass, you get a discount that makes the tolls a little more affordable.
The speed of the sunpass is impressive. Often, I was traveling at speeds not allowed by the law of man and it took a perfect picture and charged my account. There were several toll booths where I had to pass through at 25 mph. At one of those booths, it read my sunpass, processed the charge, saw that my account was low, and lite a "Low account balance" sign at the toll booth, all within a fraction of a second
I am very impressed with the Florida Sunpass system, and I will be a customer from now on.
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