Thousands of Maryland’s E-ZPass users are closing the electronic toll accounts that help drivers bypass toll booth congestion in the wake of the state’s decision to start charging a monthly fee.
The state has received requests to close some 40,000 accounts since January, when the new $1.50-per-month fee was announced, according to Maryland Transportation Authority statistics. Last month alone — when the fee took effect — users filed 19,000 requests, compared to the previous monthly average of 670 closure requests.
» The Maryland Transportation Authority had been steadily increasing the number of E-ZPass users so nearly 60 percent of the state’s toll payers use the system instead of paying tolls with cash, according to the authority. But at the end of July, the first month of the $1.50 user fee, the number of accounts dropped over the previous month for the first time in at least 18 months.
“That’s no surprise to us because most of the drivers who e-mailed us said they were going to drop their accounts,” said AAA Mid-Atlantic’s Lon Anderson about the anger over the fee among the auto club’s members. “We heard it loud and clear.”
He said the fee didn’t amount to much per year — $18 per account. But for drivers who don’t pass through tolls regularly, he said, it was enough to stop using the transponders. He said it also felt like a penalty for E-ZPass users compared to those who pay cash when the system is supposed to reduce traffic, help the environment and postpone the need for costly highway expansion projects.
“The whole point of E-ZPass was that it was going to be less expensive to the state. Traffic could move more freely and they would spend less collecting tolls,” Anderson said. “The state has a self-interest in having as many [E-ZPass users] as possible.”
But Teri Moss, a Maryland Transportation Authority spokeswoman, said the number of dropped accounts was offset somewhat by new accounts and represented a small fraction of the nearly 560,000 accounts.
But Teri Moss, a Maryland Transportation Authority spokeswoman, said the number of dropped accounts was offset somewhat by new accounts and represented a small fraction of the nearly 560,000 accounts.
“Those that canceled accounts were infrequent users,” she wrote in an e-mail. “This minimal percentage would not contribute to significant increased use of cash lanes or increased congestion at the plazas.”
She also said it likely wouldn’t affect how many toll collectors the state hired to collect tolls manually.
State officials have said the new fees aren’t intended to make money but instead recover a portion of the cost to run the E-ZPass program. And Moss said the state still has some 70,000 accounts that haven’t been used in the past year. Those accounts cost the state $2.25 to maintain, 75 cents beyond the $1.50 monthly fee.
It’s too early to know how many of those who closed their accounts may have opened them in other states that don’t have fees, according to James Crawford, executive director of the E-ZPass Interagency Group. Some drivers threatened to open them in places such as Delaware, Virginia or with a N.Y.-based authority on the Canadian border. “There are people constantly looking around for the best arrangement,” Crawford said.
If drivers continue using them under another authority, the effect of the Maryland account closures may not show up on local toll roads. But some have said the local fee may add to congestion by dissuading some from signing up at all.
