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December 6, 2004

Take it E-Z | The Maine Turnpike Authority gets set to introduce E-Z Pass

By Michaela Cavallaro
Several years ago, Steve Klein had to pick up a client at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. As he headed back toward Maine, he had to pass through one of New York's frequently congested tollbooths. But as Klein sat in traffic, waiting to hand a tolltaker his cash, he noticed something interesting several lanes over: Cars and trucks were zipping through lanes labeled "E-Z Pass" without even stopping.

Klein, who owns Mermaid Transportation in Portland, already had Transpass transponders, which provide electronic toll collection on the Maine Turnpike, for all his drivers. But after that trip to JFK, he signed the company up for E-Z Pass, which is currently in use on toll highways from Massachusetts, where it's also known as Fast Lane, to Virginia. "We did a charter about two years ago to Washington, D.C.," he says. "It was amazing ˆ— E-Z Pass took us all the way to Washington. You didn't have to reach in your pocket for anything."

The convenience has come at a cost, though; Klein has spent the last four or five years juggling the two accounts, since Maine's Transpass doesn't communicate with the toll collection system of any other state. However, Mermaid and many other commercial transportation businesses soon will no longer need a separate accounting system for Maine trips, as E-Z Pass is scheduled to become operational on the Maine Turnpike Feb. 1.

The transition has been long awaited by truckers, limo services and commuters, all of whom will be able to use one transponder for toll highways from Maine to Virginia (New Hampshire is scheduled to convert to E-Z Pass in 2005 as well). And while Maine tourism officials won't go so far as to say the switch to E-Z Pass will attract more visitors to the state, they are hopeful that Maine's use of the same system as the rest of the eastern seaboard will leave a favorable impression ˆ— not to mention looking forward to its potential to mitigate summer backups at the York tolls.

However, the transition has been a complicated one for the Maine Turnpike Authority, which had to install the E-Z Pass system while it continued to run Transpass, a $10 million project in total. Turnpike managers also have been criticized for choosing Transpass in the first place. According to Dan Paradee, a spokesman for the turnpike authority, though, when Maine began investigating electronic toll collection in the early 1990s, there was no consensus on which system to use. An early effort to coordinate the New England states fell apart, and Maine decided to move ahead on its own. "We launched Transpass in 1997, and were the first New England state" to implement electronic toll collection, he says. "Now we have the opportunity to be compatible [with other states] ˆ— that's the primary benefit" of the switch to E-Z Pass.

Making the switch
The Maine Turnpike Authority already has begun its efforts to get the approximately 100,000 current Transpass users to switch over to E-Z Pass. For individuals, the transition involves a two-page application. The business application process is quite a bit more complicated, especially for companies like Klein's that already have an E-Z Pass account with another state. To take advantage of the Maine Turnpike's commercial discount program, trucking companies and other eligible users have to have an E-Z Pass transponder from Maine ˆ— meaning they need to close out their existing E-Z Pass account (Klein's company, for example, has a New York account), then fill out the paperwork to transition their Transpass accounts.

"I already have my application forms from the Maine Motor Transport Association and I filled the thing out," says Klein. "For a commercial application, it goes on for three days, and it's probably going to cost us a little over $1,000."

The cost comes from purchasing the transponders, which run $25 a piece, another case where Maine is a little different than some of the other E-Z Pass states. New York and New Jersey, for example, charge a $10 deposit on the transponders, then replace them for free when the battery dies ˆ— the units are sealed ˆ— or otherwise malfunctions. In Maine, transponders are guaranteed for three years; if they malfunction after that time, the user has to shell out another $25 for a new one. "There's no profit here," says Paradee. "If you pay $25, it covers our cost and the cost of handling. The thought is that, for the most part, these devices are going to last until the time we're going to be able to introduce a new device."

While those details are important to commercial customers, they're relatively meaningless to the out-of-state tourists who already have E-Z Pass and will now be able to breeze through Maine tolls. "Any time people can save time, it obviously relates to money," says Vaughn Stinson, CEO of the Maine Tourism Association. "I think the fact that we will be in with the rest of the world as far as the passes is very important to our industryˆ… [However,] I don't think it would make or break" an individual's decision on vacationing in Maine.

At this point, the MTA doesn't plan to market E-Z Pass beyond its current Transpass users, though anecdotally it seems that a fair number of people who never signed up for Transpass will be attracted to the idea of one transponder for the entire eastern seaboard. "We're pretty confident that we achieved a fairly deep saturation rate" with Transpass, says Paradee. "The people who were signing up ˆ— not businesses per se, but the people who were signing up more and more were the less frequent travelers. That's going to continue to grow, but we don't see this initial huge surge [of new users]. In the future, [though], I don't think anybody's going to have a vehicle without a transponder."

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