IT’S ALL ABOUT

Each and every day we encounter a variety of people with completely different personalities. Generally, you hope for the best as you meet them, but sometimes they may be hiding a trait that you never see. Some individuals are sweet, mild, maybe a little sassy, or ingenious, and most are honest…to mention just a few and some turn out to be bad folks, dishonest, and are always trying to scam the system for possibly a few cents, or maybe millions! We’ll call them thugs and thieves as they try to navigate through life, NOT PAYING, just scamming!

Fortunately for us here in East Texas, we don’t have to worry about too much traffic, or driving on a street where we have to pay a “fee” or a “toll” to go somewhere. However, when you leave our little world and head to either Dallas, Houston, Austin or toward Oklahoma there are very few road alternatives, especially if you are trying to travel either the fastest or most direct route to a destination, but to jump on a tollway and pay a toll! Even entering into the airport whether Houston or Dallas, you get to pay!

For almost 30 years my brother has been working either directly for a Toll Authority or one of the main companies responsible for creating, consulting, engineering, constructing and auditing major toll roads in Texas. He always has funny stories to relate that keep us laughing. However, before the stories, let’s quickly look at the beginning of developing these currently expensive streets!

The mid 80’s saw Houston’s traffic as such a nightmare that they needed additional roads and decided to build an alternate route to I-45. This created the very first toll road, named Hardy, which ran parallel to 45 and operated for 6 to 7 years. It wasn’t designed to make money and was a completely losing proposition, but it was built anyway. My brother’s father-in-law was responsible to negotiate the right of way to build the entire tollway project for both Hardy and Sam Houston. Can you imagine how difficult that job was, trying to buy property to build a major highway in the middle of suburbia? The job got done and the new road started with a main toll plaza where you would pay 50 cents to get on to take a long ride from Spring, Texas all the way to downtown Houston; or if you got on midway at a ramp, it was only 10 cents.

In 1993, my brother accepted the position of “Manager of Revenue Collections” and was responsible to audit all coins and currency that were received daily as people paid to travel on the tollway. He said there were 3 ways you could pay. First, a person could go through a cashier’s booth to get change if you didn’t have the right denomination; 2nd the toll authority sold a roll of tokens; or 3rd at this time the EZ Tag system was put in place. The EZ Tag, like today, digitally photographed and allowed the driver to move through without even slowing down on most occasions as there was no gate that had to be raised to let you continue. Even though the tollway was a relatively new endeavor back then, the Toll Authority became very savvy with technology, coin machines and counters. Quarters were the main coin accepted. If you wanted to toss money into the machine counters and wait for the gate to lift, a handful of quarters was always in the car’s change holder. At the time, that was the fastest way.

There were problems and great stories with all methods of paying tolls. The cashiers took any denomination of dollar bills, returned your change and tossed in the correct amount of quarters so you could continue. As the auditor, my brother would occasionally have to sit undetected and monitor the cashiers as they finished their shifts and took their cash boxes into the main office. He said many of them had bulging pockets of quarters jangling as they walked to their shiny new vehicles! Oops, busted a few thieves!

Additionally, there were “roaming supervisors” during the various shifts that figured out how to circumvent the coins dropping into the counters in the coin operated lanes. They would install their own box which would catch the coins before they dropped into the hopper. At a specific time, the “supervisor” would have a friend drive through the lane and hand them the box as they drove by. Unfortunately for the employees, the Toll Authority knew how much should have been collected by the mechanics of the equipment; and knew how much was lost as well! Oops, busted a few more!

Sometimes, a spot audit was called and the employees would be ushered into the office with their cash tills and have to account for what the Toll Authority knew should have been received for a certain period of time. And, sometimes, busted again!

When you initially approached a toll coin counter, the driver stopped by the machine, rolled down his or her window and with the left arm and hand tossed the change into the machine. You can envision that movement and imagine that occasionally various items of jewelry went into the machine as well. Sometimes a wedding ring, engagement diamond or bracelet went along with the quarters! They even found a mans Rolex watch that managed to land in with the change! People would frantically call expressing their losses and the Toll Authority would have to get details of time and place to alert the Armored Vault company to look at those special boxes and hopefully retrieve the valuables!

In order to expedite easing through the toll booths, the Authority sold rolls of “Toll Tokens” for $10.00 a roll. The coin counter machines were programmed to measure the size of each coin, the weight, and the metal content. If something didn’t match the specifications, the gate didn’t open! People hated to have to pay to get somewhere and were always trying to scam the system. They came up with some ingenious ideas, some worked and some not so much!

Do you remember the little colored candy wafers made by NECCO? If they were frozen, the weight was correct and sometimes they would allow the gate to open…and sometimes not! People tried everything to get around the system and not pay. Machinist tried to make tokens, the size and weight of a quarter to be able to toss it in and open the gates. Parking tokens, bus tokens, slugs, foreign coins, pesos, anything that looked like a quarter was tried.

There was a kid entertainment restaurant in Houston and Dallas called “Dave and Busters” that used tokens for their games. They told their customers that their game tokens would work in the toll coin machines and sold them by the thousands at half price. And, they did for a while! My brother said he always wanted to give each of the Toll Authority employees a bucket of Dave and Busters tokens and tell them to go, play and have fun! However, the phony fake tokens all belonged to the county and were audited from time to time. In fact, they had bags and bags of all kinds of tokens, slugs and foreign coins stuffed in a closet that had to be accounted for and were audited…so no giving away!

When the EZ Tag system was installed it was the first time there were no gates. People decided they would just drive through, not pay and be on their way. The Toll Authority had to remedy this malfunction and designed a “Violation Enforcement System” which compared the vehicle license to the Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) system. At the time the CD Rom was so new that they were required to use VHS tapes, however, their “Debt to Service” system proved to be worth the expenditure to create. A camera took a picture of the tail end of the vehicle with the license plate. The OCR image was converted to a digital image and compared against the DMV files, with the outcome of the owner’s name and address. The first time a person ran through without paying there was no penalty; the second time, the same; the third time an enforcement letter would be sent out with pictures showing the license plate, and demand payment plus a $5.00 fee.

This opened up a whole new realm for the Toll Authority. As the enforcement letters would be received, they got a multitude of calls from family members. One lady called in to say that WAS her husband’s license plate but that had to be a mistake because her husband was supposedly out of town on that day! Oops, busted! Another man called in to say that WAS his son-in-law’s car and license plate and THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!

Sometimes people would ignore the enforcement letters and continue to disrespect the toll roads and the Authority. They were obviously not aware that cameras were recording every move. On the west side of town, “Sam Central” as it was referred to, there was a new Corvette heading southbound at about the same time each morning; and returning northbound each evening at about the same time. They watched the cameras diligently and his toll tally was exceeding several hundreds of dollars as Mr. Corvette never paid. The Toll Authority set up a sting with several of their employees. As the corvette came flying down the road, the first employee radioed, “here he comes”; the second alerted the authorities and as he blew through the toll booth, the Constable pulled him over. The Constable asked him if he was aware that he had to pay a toll and the man said, “I’m TOO important to pay tolls, I’m a VP of a ‘major tech company’ and shouldn’t have to pay tolls!” The Constable asked him to exit his VET, cuffed him and took him away. The man said as he was being hauled off…”I’ll get out of this!” But he freaked as he saw the wrecker back up to load up his new Corvette. And, he did get out of it … he was fired from his job!

There was another guy who was driving an old ’88 Oldsmobile and traveling north and south at the same time each day. He wasn’t paying tolls either and his account was going into the hundreds. He got set up by the Toll Authority as they watched the camera and his travel patterns. When the Constable pulled him over, they discovered that he had taken a marks-a-lot and changed one letter on his license plate to another. Too bad for the poor guy as it was his birthday, his license had expired, he had no registration, no insurance and owed several hundreds of dollars. He got to make the jail trip too! Oops, busted another one!

As would never be expected, however, on second thought….you might expect almost anything…the toll booth cashiers witnessed it all! They said, “Some people are just weird!” A man was driving an open-aired jeep that had no doors, no windows, only a frame. He said he wanted to “feel free, tan up and have the air blow through his hair”…however, as he stopped to pay his toll, he was completely naked! He tried to give the toll cashier a dollar, and she refused to take it!! Her thought, “no way was I touching that”!!

Poor lady said sometimes she witnessed emotionally passionate things going on in the back seat that nobody wanted or frankly needed to see as a car would pass through the toll booth! I believe she quit her job shortly thereafter as she had had enough!

The toll revenue has grown exponentially as has the traffic in our major cities in Texas. The Harris County Toll Authority initially could account for about $75 million in revenue per YEAR…today it’s over $1 million per DAY.

In the State of Texas most toll roads are owned by local authorities. NTTA by Dallas; HCTRA by Houston; FBCTRA by Fort Bend, but Houston operates it for them; TXDot from Austin south through the valley; and a private Spanish company owns the tollway in Austin.

We have come a long way from the early frustrating days of tossing quarters and waiting on the gate to lift. There will always be scammers but at least the Toll Authority has a good handle on them now since you don’t have to pay money as you go. You simply sail through unobstructed with a toll tag and your credit card gets charged and keeps track adding as needed. No worries today. Just drive and try to stay dressed and behave. The cameras are still watching!