Transpass passed by

To hear the Maine Turnpike Authority tell it, the planned upgrade of its electronic toll system is just a case of advancing technology, of the latest thing five years ago becoming, as technology will, today’s obsolescence.

To some degree, that is true. To an equal degree – exactly equal in terms of upgrade cost – it is casting favorable light upon the wrong decision.

Maine’s $13.5 million Transpass system went into service in the summer of 1997, roughly 18 months behind schedule. Although it has saved subscribers considerable time and some money, it remains plagued with bugs – false readings and toll cheats still cost the authority some $4,800 in lost revenue every month. Now, the authority intends to spend $9.4 million to convert to another system, E-ZPass.

Those who have traveled in other states throughout the Northeast know E-ZPass. It is the system used from Massachusetts to Maryland. It is the system Maine would be using today if, for reasons that defy understanding, it had not made the conscious decision to buy the technology everyone else rejected – rejected so soundly that the Transpass technology no longer is marketed in the United States.

The demise of Transpass should come as no surprise. The Transpass transponders – the $60 boxes affixed to dashboards – cost more than twice E-ZPass’s. The superior reliability, affordability and compatibility of E-ZPass was apparent to other states as far back as 1993, when the coalition of states that use E-Zpass began forming, a coalition that today allows seamless electronic toll collection up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Except, of course, for the seaboard’s uppermost part.

It is particularly hard to understand why, when this decision was being made, the authority touted TransPass’s higher level of “sophistication” as a selling point. Maine has but one toll road; other states have multiple toll roads, plus toll bridges and toll tunnels. Somehow, states with much more complex toll-collection needs found the unsophisticated E-ZPass entirely suitable.

The result is that, while the conversion from Transpass to the latest version of E-ZPass will cost $9.4 million, an upgrade from the earlier version of E-ZPass would run only half as much. The authority is quick to point out that the conversion/upgrade can be done without increasing tolls. The traveling public may wish to point out that the conversion part represents $4.7 million that could be spent making actual improvements to Maine’s major trade and transportation route instead of fixing a mistake.

The ultimate authority here is not the Maine Turnpike Authority, but the Maine Legislature. At no point during this misguided process did lawmakers sufficiently question why this small, poor state was bucking traffic. More expensive transponders, the desire for greater sophistication, the acceptance of different technology in other states – all passed by without objection. Even several years of losing thousands of dollars per month in uncollected tolls has failed to rouse the Legislature to more diligent oversight. Perhaps wasting $4.7 million will.