Free Market Toll Passes
Executive Summary Revised
Freedom Pass is a new company that will provide motorists the opportunity to pay their tolls electronically without registering their driver license number or vehicle license plate number. Freedom Pass will also allow agencies that collect tolls to get out of the data collection business for law enforcement agencies and courts issuing subpoenas.
Freedom Pass will provide a wide array of opportunity for motorists to obtain and upload their toll transponders without having to provide their drivers license number and vehicle tag numbers. Prepaid toll cash cards will be available in more places and far more convenient than through the current system by allowing motorists to make purchases at convenience stores, fuel stations, super markets, discount stores, and on-line.
Turnpike and bridge agencies that collect tolls from motorists have been hit with subpoenas and threatened legal action to produce the toll usage records of their customers, the motorists. The courts have required electronic toll takers to turn over their records to prove the location of vehicles and their drivers for divorce and family court proceedings. There have also been several threats by law enforcement governmental agencies to seek the records of motorists to identify those motorists that have exceeded the posted speed limits. It is very easy to prove the motorist’s location and the average speed that a motorist traveled between the time that they got on the turnpike & bridges and comparing it to the time that they exited.
Thus, both the motorist and the turnpike & bridge authorities could benefit from having Freedom Pass instead of the current system. A motorist would have the piece of mind of knowing that he or she is not being tracked in all of their travels and speed traveled when they pay tolls much like the motorist who directly spends cash out of their pocket. Moreover, the turnpike & bridge entities would be able to get out of the legal business and liability of providing personal, private and sensitive information that they should not have anyway nor need to do collect the tolls. Current methods of enforcement such as taking a picture of license plates for toll cheats will be same system with Freedom Pass. Any motorist who skips toll payments will be treated equally whether they have purchased Freedom Pass or not and be forced to pay a fine under existing laws.
In its marketing efforts, Freedom Pass will target first those motorists that have not purchased electronic tolls due to the potential awareness of having their driving habits and routes tracked in a data base that any level of government could have access for speed enforcement or in response to court orders in criminal or civil cases. Freedom Pass will also seek to convince agencies that need to collect tolls, that Freedom Pass will get them out of the law enforcement business and lesson their