The tourism industry has an economic impact of $57 billion on Florida's economy but with tourism down statewide, should we be making it harder to be a tourist? There is an insane SunPass alternative afoot - Toll-by-Plate - to be instituted in anticipation of tearing down toll plazas. The Miami Herald article doesn't address it and maybe the Miami Dade Expressway Authority doesn't either: What do tourists do? The tolls are on the way to 2 National Parks and the Florida Keys (which registered the second highest occupancy rate in Florida at 69.8% in January 2009) so we have plenty of tourists. Do you really think tourists are going to pre-pay tolls? What if they borrow a car without a SunPass? According to the Miami Herald:Toll-by-Plate customers in 2010 will be able to pre-pay their accounts in cash, check or credit and debit cards at thousands of locations, including convenience stores and supermarkets. They can pay online if they have a credit or debit card. Starting in 2011, drivers will be able to pay in cash after they get bills in the mail.
Also if residents don't want to set up SunPass accounts, how are these Toll-By-Plate accounts any different? I'm all for fixing traffic but not for confusing people. Just get rid of the tolls.
10 comments:
Getting rid of the tolls is the right thing to do. This new plan is off the wall. Now we will have more lines in the grocery store instead of on the road.
When I read the plan presented in the MH - I also thought this doesn't make much sense for visitors.
Seems like it would make more sense to force car rental agencies to have sunpass but I agree - this is silly.
Car rental companies already offer sunpass.
All tourists don't rent cars.
A tourist driving down from Texas, South Carolina...even Canada for instance. What about them?
In Colorado, they equip all rental vehicles with a Sunpass-type sticker. They bill the renter of the vehicle for the tolls they collected at a later date.
Same in Florida.
That's it, get rid of tolls... but the revenue stream will dry up.
The SunPass could be more aptly named SomePass, some pass and the rest of us wait in line to give cold cash. Remember it was we who pay cash that bank-rolled the Sunpass "me first" technolust. Realize that with personal convenience as the carrot, MDX holds the whopping balance on all those pre-paid accounts, making money with your money but giving no return on your investment. Just like when gov jeb gambled/lost on Wall Street using our tax $$.
So long as the motoring public has no voice, it will continue to get fleeced at the pump, toll and parking meter.
Who wouldn't want a nickel for every clunker?
I thought the idea was that if you didn't have a sunpass transponder they would send you a bill in the mail.
The issue I was thinking about would be whether the state of Florida had access to registration records from other states. So if Illinois, etc, plate goes through zone, how do they know who to send bill to. Are state records open to other states?
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