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Shirt, Shoes and Still No Service - No.2

January 15, 2008 at 12:55 pm · Filed under Misc, Travel

We went to Chicago this summer and rented a car. When we were there, we had to go through a myriad of tolls around the Chicago area. When we returned fairly late from the Great America theme park, we stopped at an automatic toll, put our money in and it never registered. It was 10:30 at night and no one was around — obviously the machine was not working properly. We drove ahead and I noticed a bright light — obviously we were being photographed. We didn’t think any more about it, until we recently received a letter from our car rental company saying we owed for a traffic violation. I called the Illinois Tollway number and told the representative what we had experienced and that the machine was apparently not operating correctly. She said that “we would have to pay the fine since they had no way to know if we were lying or not.” Welcome to our fair city! She continued that it would be senseless to try and fight it since she didn’t want to have us travel all the way back to Chicago for a hearing and then lose. No kidding, Sherlock.

I wrote the governor’s office in Illinois and suggested that rental cars should be given an iPass so visitors (who can’t access the IPass) don’t have to drive on unfamiliar roads, come up on a toll unexpectedly and have to start fumbling for change. It is like charging a guest in your home a fee to use the bathroom. So far, they never responded. Maybe they don’t care since I can’t vote in their state.

Posted by Dr. Disney on January 15, 2008 at 12:55 pm · Permalink

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4 Comments »

John wrote @ January 15th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

To steal a line from Enchanted: Welcome to Chicago!

The Daily Herald newspapers recently did report on our wonderful tollway system. Among other things, the report found:

• Enforcement cameras have trouble reading as many as 25 percent of Illinois license plates, increasing the chance of erroneous fines.

• A majority of cases appealed to the Illinois secretary of state have been thrown out, mostly because of flaws in how the tollway notifies alleged violators.

• A 13-month gap in sending out violation notices is now landing thousands of drivers in financial and legal trouble. Yet the tollway is not considering payment plans as it did with similar failures in 2003.

• The violation computer system is so dysfunctional, tollway officials have little idea how many people are cheating on tolls or how much money is owed.

Now they’ve said that although they admit there are problems, they’ll have to wait to fix them until they have the time and resources… nice huh? Those that are interested can read more at http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=113384&src=3

Oh, and I’m sorry you had to visit Great America, it’s a shadow of it’s former self. As someone who worked there when it was owned by Marriot when it was truly a “Theme park” it just pains me to go there anymore :(

Ricky wrote @ January 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

At least the Florida toll system is very forgiving as they realize that problems are usually theirs, not the driver’s. You get several warnings before an actual citation.

Mrs S | A pocketful of pixiedust wrote @ January 16th, 2008 at 4:33 am

Great advertisement for tourism in Chicago there

Rob b. wrote @ January 16th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

Trust me, the Illinios tollway blows. I have ipass and still get letters in the mail saying that I blew off the toll. I did hear that if you have one of the special license plates (911,organ donor,etc) they, the IL tollway has to manually search for the plate in the database. The camera can’t pick up the smaller letter on the plate. So I ordered some.