Road Warrior

The in basket: Glen Adrig e-mailed to say, “I’m a bit confused about changes to the Tacoma Narrows and SR 520 Bridge tolls.

“An article in the Kitsap Sun on 3/19/13 said that there would be no toll increases because the toll rates can only be set by the Legislature..and not by the Transportation Commission. Senator Pam Roach spoke at the Transportation Commission’s meeting where they passed the 25-cent toll increase in spite of her telling them that they can’t do so as of March 8.

“Then, 6 days later I received an email from WSDOT Go to Go! which told me of a planned increase on the Tacoma Narrows and 520 Bridge tolls.

It said, ‘The Washington State Transportation Commission is proposing toll rate increases on the Tacoma Narrows and State Route 520 bridges. The commission works with WSDOT to establish toll rates that ensure both bridges generate enough revenue to meet financial obligations.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge proposed rates
The commission is proposing a 25-cent increase to be effective July 1, 2013.’

“So…which is correct ?” Glen asked. “Is there or is there not going to be a toll increase effective July 1?”

The out basket: Annie Johnson of the Good to Go! staff replies, “Sen. Roach’s comments refer to Initiative 1185, which was passed by the voters this past fall. The initiative requires that any new or increased fees be approved by a simple majority of the Legislature.

“According to the Attorney General, tolls are considered a fee and any increase in tolls requires legislative action, which could include delegating the authority to set toll rates back to the commission. The commission’s toll rate proposal includes language stating that the rate increase is subject to the Legislature re-delegating toll rate setting authority back to the commission.”

So what happens July 1 depends on what the lawmakers do before that.

The in basket: When I wrote in a recent column about why the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge will need to be repaved so soon, and the fact the only the new bridge would be done, I got some comments on the Road Warrior blog at kitsapsun.com. Two were certain the old bridge needs a repaving much worse than the new one.

H.W. Slach said, “Drove the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge today and the old one, too. The old one has lots of problems; the new one is great. Stop looking at a calendar and look at the road. If a repaving is done, choose the old bridge when the time comes.”

DAWGFAN063 said, “Have you driven across the old side? The potholes in the center lane almost make the lane unbearable.”

For those who didn’t see the first column, the state said bridges get a thinner layer of asphalt (to reduce weight, I suppose) and need repaving more often than other highways.

I am usually with my wife when I cross the old bridge and use the HOV lane, so I hadn’t noticed the row of rough patches in the centermost of the three general purpose lanes. I didn’t see any potholes when I made it a point to drive it, but it was a pretty rough ride.

The out basket: Chris Keegan of the state’s bridge division, said, “The old bridge received an overlay in 2007 after the new Narrows Bridge was opened. The new Narrows Bridge overlay will be paid for out of bridge tolls, which was the cause for the discussion (about delaying its repaving one biennium to keep tolls low). The old Narrows Bridge overlay will be paid for out of preservation funds which come from gas taxes.

“During the ice storm a little over a year ago the overlay on the Old Narrows Bridge was damaged by the use of tire chains,” he said. “The damage was patched by our maintenance crews.

“We do expect that the old bridge will need another overlay about a year after the new Narrows Bridge.

“Because we can now switch traffic from one bridge to the other to do major projects we will likely do these projects at least a year apart. Being able to take traffic completely off a bridge will make the working conditions much safer for the contractor,” Chris said.

The in basket: I’ve read a couple of stories about efforts to avoid or minimize toll increases on the Tacoma Narrow Bridges, and was struck by one proposal from State Sen. Nathan Schlicher to reduce pressure for an increase.

He’s asked that an overlay (repaving) of the bridges be delayed from the next two-year budget cycle to the one after.

Why would the bridges require an overlay at all so soon after the construction of the new one and retrofitting of the old one, I wondered.

The out basket: Annie Johnson of the state toll program, Good to Go!, says, “The asphalt bridge deck overlays on the Tacoma Narrows Bridges are relatively shallow. Shallower overlays, like the one on the bridge, have a typical lifespan of seven to eight years. The new bridge opened in 2007 which means that it would likely need a new overlay in 2014 or 2015.”

Only the new bridge is to be overlaid this time, she said. It’s described in the news stories as a $3 million job.

The in basket: There was an interesting column by Danny Westneat in the Sunday Seattle Times on Oct. 14 about a woman who was assessed the $40 civil penalty for not paying the toll for a trip she made across the 520 Bridge in Seattle, even though two bills mailed to her were sent back as undeliverable and she never got them..

The law says the toll is owed whether the car owner has been billed or not, not much of a problem for those of us who have transponders and Good to Go! accounts, but a concern of infrequent bridge users without transponders on their vehicles.

I told Annie Johnson of the Good to Go! toll office I thought the public relations damage of such a policy might outweigh the revenue gained.

The out basket: Annie said the woman’s mail had a temporary hold on it, and when the post office’s permitted time for that service expired, the mail was sent back to the sender – to the Good to Go! office in the case of the bills.

So they knew the woman hadn’t gotten the bills. Her mail was getting to her again by the time the penalty notice was sent.

And that can happen to anyone who lets a toll bill go unpaid for 80 days, whether notified of the owed amount or not.

Annie said it is important to expect to pay the toll when crossing the 520 or Tacoma Narrows bridges. Don’t regard it as optional or gamble that your crossing went unnoticed.

If you don’t have a Good to Go! account, find a way to remember the date of the toll incurred, to be aware that there is a problem you need to track down if 14 days go by and you haven’t been billed. There is a separate $40 civil penalty for each unpaid toll.

If you ignore the toll and the civil penalty, you’ll have trouble renewing your license tab. Brad Benfield of the state Department of Licensing says, “The Department of Transportation sends us information about toll violators who meet the parameters for having a hold placed on their vehicle renewal and we flag the record so renewal transactions can’t be processed until the owner pays the tolls and any associated fees or penalties.”

The woman Westneat wrote about paid the $40 as well as the toll, but there are options, Annie said, discussed online at http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/GoodToGo/faq.

The options when getting a toll bill and penalty are to pay it, write a letter seeking redress, or going before a judge to plead your case.

If you haven’t seen a bill in the mail two weeks after your vehicle crossed one of the bridges, and your tolls are not paid automatically from a Good to Go! account, you should call customer service at 1-866-936-8246 to find out why not.

Even Good to Go! customers can get a toll bill in the mail, with the same penalties for ignoring it. That Web site said reasons for such a billing include:

- You bought a Good To Go! Sticker Pass at a retail store and did not activate it by opening a Good To Go! account or adding it to an existing account

- Your Good To Go! Pass was not detected and you hadn’t kept current the plate numbers listed on your account.

- Credit card information on your Good To Go! account is not up-to-date.

- Your account does not have enough money in it to pay your tolls.

This all seems to be another incentive for buying a transponder and opening a Good to Go! account, in addition to the extra $2 one pays to pay one’s toll by license plate number.

The in basket: Melinda Knapp asks, “Is there a place where we can see the breakdown on how much has been collected and paid toward the price of building the (Tacoma Narrows) bridge?  Will this toll always be in place or will it be discontinued when the bridge has been ‘paid for’?

The out basket: The plan from the beginning has been for the tolls to retire the bonds that paid for the bridge in 2030, and that the bridge would become toll-free then. That still is the expectation, says Annie Johnson of the state’s Good to Go! toll office.

Projections before the bridge opened were that the toll would be $6 per crossing by 2016 and stay there through 2030, but that didn’t differentiate between various kinds of tolls, and may not have even envisioned license plate tolling. And as we have seen, raising the tolls is a political process involving a citizens committee and the state Transportation Commission.

“We do post quarterly financial statements for all our toll facilities online,” Annie said. “You and your readers can find the Tacoma Narrows Bridge financial statements online at  http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Tolling/TNBTolling/TNBLibrary.htm.

The in basket: Don Brandvold writes to say, “I was driving over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge the other night and noticed how dark the bridges are.

“Right after the new bridge was build, a group started collecting money to have lights on both bridges up the cabled walkways.  What happened to the project and also the money?  Will it ever happen?”

The out basket: There still is hope, says Desa Gese Coniff, a Tacoma lawyer who speaks for the organization. But they have been unsuccessful so far in getting final state approval for what they want to do.

They were very close to a start on the project, she said, when the state’s mounting financial problems caused it to take away money the group was expecting.

Then a lead state engineer objected to the plans that had gotten earlier approval, and efforts to get approval drag on. Assignment of the objecting engineer to the Alaskan Way viaduct project may be a factor, she guessed.

She also said the state so far doesn’t want the lights they are proposing to be used to their full capability, specifically changing colors and blinking.

“We have continued to tweak our plan for his approval and have found another light that would cost less,” she said. “We haven’t heard anything lately.” They seek to light both the old and new bridges.

They haven’t actually raised any money yet, she said, something they avoided to keep from having to return it. They’ll seek donations from private sources after the state signs off on the work.

“We have put thousands of hours into this, but until we can get the past this DOT issue, we can’t proceed,” she said.

Their Web site, narrowsbridgelights.org, isn’t being updated, she said, and my browser couldn’t find it. .

The in basket: Bernie Golbeck writes, “A few weeks ago some out-of-town friends visited during a road trip. We all went to Tacoma to meet other friends in separate vehicles.

“We went through the toll booth ahead of them in order to pay their Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll. The attendant told us that he did not have any way to scan our Good To Go pass. We were instructed to drive through the red light and the camera would capture our license plate number and charge our account.

“We paid for our friends toll and they got the receipt.  We never did get charged but our friends were mailed a bill for not paying!  They mailed in a copy of their receipt but have yet to hear anything.

“There must be countless people who have a Good To Go pass going across the bridge with other friends in cars without the pass.  Going through the scanning lanes and then pulling over on the shoulder to wait for the booth traffic seems to be asking for trouble.  Maybe they would listen to you and your infinite wisdom and come up with a resolution to a pesky situation, like at least one booth that could scan a Good To Go pass.

“This also happens a lot to me on my motorcycle,” Bernie said.  ”Other bikers don’t have the pass and I end up on the shoulder waiting for them and then I have to merge in a hurry when they catch up.  Toll booths have been around a long time.  This seems like an elementary glitch that should have been resolved years ago.”

The out basket: My infinite wisdom came up a bit short on this one. Annie Johnson of the Good to Go! office reminded me that I had written a Road Warrior column last September explaining the reason that they had discontinued the availability of transponder scanners at the toll booths.

“Last fall we completed upgrades to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that allowed us to read both the new and old Good To Go! passes,” she said. “One of the results of the upgrade was that customers can’t use their Good To Go! passes to pay at the toll booths.

“If you recall, we estimated that on an average weekday there were approximately 100 customers with passes stopping at the toll booth to pay their toll and with a cost of $90,000, we didn’t feel it was worth it to upgrade the readers over the toll booths.

“In December, we began photo tolling on the bridge so in a situation like one described by your reader, the easiest thing to do is to temporarily add their visitor’s license plate to their Good To Go! account. Customers can do this online, in-person at a customer service center or by phone at 1-866-936-8246. (They can also use any of these ways to remove a license plate from their account and as a reminder you can have up to six vehicles on one account.)

“Adding visitor’s plates to an account allows both vehicles to skip the toll booths and use the Good To Go! lanes. For vehicles registered on a Good To Go! account, but without a pass, the Good To Go! toll rate plus a $0.25 photo enforced fee will be deducted from the account for each toll transaction. This is less expensive than the cash toll rate and allows folks traveling in multiple cars to stay together.”

She also said they’ll be happy to work with Bernie and his friend to resolve the disputed bill. I sent him the details on what they need to do that.

The out basket: Three readers have told me of seeing a maneuver in the Good to Go! transponder lanes at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that appears to be an attempt to foil the toll collection.

Jeff Griswell wrote, “Just as I was about to go through the lighted area, the car in front of me tapped their brakes and swerved into the right side of the road against the barrier, not hitting the barrier or anything, and kept driving. My assumption is they were avoiding (not sure if it’s possible) the camera so they did not have to pay the toll at all. If that is able to happen, I think there needs to be a fix.”

Richard Helriegel described what he saw on Dec. 7 in later afternoon.

“As I watched, a green Honda sedan moved from the righthand lane, crossed the fog line and passed under the camera/light bars on the shoulder (which has no cameras, etc.)  I am curious how prevalent that is, and if the cameras have a wide enough field of view to catch the offending vehicle.

The third reader, whose name I’ve lost, said, “I noticed a four-door Ford sedan with two occupants turn on their emergency flashing lights and slow down, pulling into the far right hand lane, next to the Jersey barrier that separates it from the toll booth lanes.

“The vehicle then transited under the toll sensing overhead cameras and then turned off their emergency flashers and pulled back into the regular far right lane and picked up speed. As I looked at the overhead camera mountings I noticed that there is not one hanging directly over that lane. Is there any chance that these folks might be scofflaws and avoiding tolls?”

The out basket: The toll collection agency would rather not have this publicized, as it’s uncertain how effective the maneuver might be and they don’t want to encourage it. .

“Some of the cars that try this dodge are captured by the cameras and some are not,” said Janet Matkin, until recently the spokeswoman for the Good to Go! office. “If a WSP officer sees it happen, they will pursue them. It is illegal to avoid the tolls. But the officers are not sitting at the toll plaza waiting for this kind of maneuvering.”

Annie Johnson, one of Janet’s successors in the office, said the fine for trying to avoid a toll is $124, the standard penalty for most driving infractions.

She didn’t say so, but crossing the edge line in motion is a separate infraction all by itself, driving off the roadway, and might incur its own $124 fine.

So with the Pay by Mail toll now $5.50, a driver could get away with this 20 or 30 times and still be the loser if caught just once. Of course, the fine wouldn’t go to paying off the bridge bonds as the tolls do.

The in basket: There was a portable electronic sign on eastbound Highway 16 approaching the toll booths at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge a while back saying that as of the following Tuesday, cash and credit would be the only ways you can pay your toll at the toll booths.

What was that supposed to mean and what other ways are there, I wondered. Beads? Pelts? Baked goods?

The out basket: That was the toll takers’ way of saying that you no longer can pay your toll by having your Good to Go! pass read electronically at the toll booths.

Curiously, about 100 drivers a day had been doing that, instead of staying in the 55 mph lanes to pass beneath the Good to Go! readers there. If any of you readers are among them, I’d like you to post a comment below explaining why.

It would have cost $90,000 to upgrade the electronic readers at the toll booths to read the new generation of transponders and it wasn’t worth the money, says Janet Matkin of Good to Go!

It’s all part of the announcement that the through-lane readers are now reading the new generation transponders, ending the interim process of billing Good to Go! customers based on photos of their license plates. The new transponders hadn’t been working with the bridge’s overhead readers, so they were upgraded.

The same announcement reminded us all that in December, readers without a Good to Go! pass and not wanting to lose time by paying at the toll booths can use the transponder lanes and get a bill for the toll in the mail, identified by their license numbers.

But it will be costly, at $5.50 per trip, rather than $4 at the toll booths and $2.75 if you have a transponder and Good to Go! account.