The in basket: Bob Simonoff has been having trouble in the form of citations from the state’s Good to Go! office for not paying the toll to cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

He crosses the bridge a few times a week in his work van, and had no trouble until February, when he got a citation after one crossing. Unfortunately, that one got lost in the mail, so he didn’t know he had a problem of it until after he got two more in April.

His main problem, he learned, was that he didn’t think to register his van’s new license plates with Good to Go! after the state required him to get new ones as part of its every-seven-year plate replacement program.

He suggested my readers would benefit if I mentioned in the column the need to get new plates listed in  one’s toll account.

The out basket: And so I shall. If you are one of thousands with Good to Go! toll accounts who are told each year you must replace your plates, be sure to go on line or call Good to Go! with the new plate’s number so your account can be updated.

Janet Matkin of the toll office said, “Although I don’t know the specifics of (Bob’s) case, my guess is that his transponder stopped working for some reason and when we tried to identify his vehicle by his license plate number, the new plate number wasn’t on the account.

“Anytime that a vehicle doesn’t have a good read from a transponder,” she said, “we capture a photo of the license plate and then run that plate number against a list of Good To Go! account holders before sending it through the violation process. If he’d had his correct plate registered, we would have charged his Good To Go! account for the toll.

“This summer,” she added, “(we) will be introducing Pay By Mail to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, so vehicles that use the electronic toll lanes and don’t have Good To Go!accounts (or who don’t have their correct license plate numbers registered on their accounts) will be sent a Toll Bill in the mail, rather than automatically being sent a violation notice.

The toll rate will $5.50 for Pay By Mail, higher than the toll otherwise, to cover the costs of processing and sending a Toll Bill. “But, that is substantially less than the $52 violation notice that they would receive now,” Janet said

Account holders also “should remember to remove the license plate number from their account if they sell a vehicle,” she said.

Lastly, she said, “You also might want to suggest that if they have guests visiting from out of the area or they are renting a car, they can temporarily add the license plates numbers to their account and not have to worry about stopping at the toll booths.”

The in basket: William Smith of Allyn writes, “I recently traveled the toll section of Highway 167 and noticed an overhead sensor over the non-toll lane as well as over the HOT lane. For what purpose is the sensor over the non-toll lane?  

“Also,” he said, “I assume that crossing over the double white lines in this area is subject to the $450 fine, similar to crossing the gore lines at the highway 3-304 connection south of Bremerton.”

The out basket: The white lines separating the HOT lanes from the all-purpose lanes are among those it is illegal to cross, as the signs along that highway make clear. The State Patrol calls it failure to obey a regulatory sign, which carries the same $124 fine as misusing the HOT lane itself. The fine for crossing the white gore lines can be $411, not $450.

The intermittent dotted lines that interrupt the solid white line on Highway 167 are where it’s legal to cross back and forth. 

The overhead sensors in the lane adjacent to the HOT lane helps confirm the lane being used by any given vehicle, says Patricia Michaud of the state’s toll division.

“The sensors … help confirm whether a car is in the HOT lane or not,” she said. “It helps ensure the system is properly identifying which cars are and aren’t in the HOT lane. 

“For example,” she said, “without the second sensor verification,  a vehicle leaving the HOT lane or straddling between the toll and non-toll lane could be mistakenly identified as in the HOT lane.”

For those unfamiliar with the idea of HOT lanes and/or Highway 167, a freeway between Renton and Auburn east of the Sound, they are HOV lanes that single occupant vehicles can pay to use.

The toll ranges from 50 cents to $9. The toll “algorithm,” as the state calls it, recently was changed to make it less common for the toll to rise to $9.

“Tolls reached $9 too often in summer 2008 so we adjusted the algorithm in October 2008 ,” Patricia said. “We haven’t made any further changes to it and it’s hard to predict the rates.” 

In the wee hours, when traffic is light, anyone can use the HOT lanes at no charge. The toll mounts with the level of congestion to limit use of the HOT lanes and keep traffic in them moving at around 50 mph. After the toll has hit $9, the lanes become available only to vehicles with two or more occupants, and motorcycles, each of which can use the HOT lanes at all times without paying anything.

Tolls are collected via the same Good to Go! transponders that collect tolls at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. They can be shielded to avoid a toll when one has one or more passengers and can use the HOV lanes at no charge. 

Details and a lot more information can be found online. The address is way too long and complicated to reproduce here. Just use Google or one of its competitors and ask for “SR167 HOT lanes.”

“The HOT lanes are helping reduce congestion, which is the purpose of this project,” Patricia said. “Speeds have increased in the general purpose lanes by 20 percent and the HOT lanes by 5 percent during the peak-period in the peak direction.”