Ez-pass Free Ride Ends: It's About Time

You can't really blame folks who feel betrayed by the imposition of the fee. For a long time, the state was peddling the Myth of the Free Lunch. Here, Dave, have a free transponder. No, Sally, there's no charge for the service. You're doing the planet a service, Jamal. You'll never sit in a tollbooth line again, Maria.

I don't get a free pass here. I didn't blow the whistle on the proliferation of transponders that were going unused. When the former governor and former comptroller were holding cheery press conferences, exhorting everybody to sign up for E-ZPass so we could all reach the beach faster, I didn't ask them the right questions. It wasn't until the authority blew the whistle on itself that I realized I'd missed a darn good story.

(Hint to fellow reporters in other E-ZPass states: Ask your local toll authorities how many of their E-ZPass subscribers have gone a year without using their transponders to pay a toll. Ask how much money they've been wasting as a result. Ask how many Marylanders have signed up in their state over the past six months. It'll be the easiest front page story you ever had.)

There was a sound reason for making E-ZPass available free in the beginning. It is a more efficient way of moving traffic, and it should save costs in the long run, despite heavy, upfront capital costs. And it probably did require a sweetener to get the system to the point where it could stand on its own.

But E-ZPass is been well-established here and through most of the East Coast. The free-lunch offer long outlived its rationale. But because people had been fed a line to get them to adopt the technology, they saw the reduction of a subsidy as an onerous new tax.

As a government entity, the authority feels its has to sugarcoat everything it says. I don't.

If you're not using your E-ZPass enough to justify the cost, ditch the transponder. It's not a tax. You don't have to keep paying $1.50 a month. You won't miss it much and you won't be missed as a customer. Traffic will flow just fine. You'll get part of your windshield back.

And the next time someone offers you something for "free," keep walking.