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Toll Road

A year or two, (or longer?), ago, our city opened its first toll road. Fortunately, it’s a way we rarely ever go, so we’ve never given it more than a passing thought. On the rare occasion that we do get out that way, we just avoid the road and take a different path. Supposedly it saves travel time for regular commuters, but we’re not in a hurry to go that direction anyway, so who needs to pay a toll to save five minutes once in a blue moon?

But it is somewhat confusing. There are signs up that way, but they’re not real clear. I mean, you might get going down the highway, and then you see the signs announcing the toll road, but it’s not clear if you are already on the toll road or if there is an exit to take to get off before it. We’ve seen signs saying “Toll Road” suddenly pop up while we’re driving down a road we thought was free, then after we struggle to figure out how to get off, suddenly the signs of “Toll” disappear. We’re left wondering, “What the heck?”

This happened a few weeks ago. I was driving and Wifegrit was navigating, (never a good combination for the two of us), and we had that confusion about how to avoid the toll road. The toll signs appeared for a couple of miles and then they disappeared.  I thought we had avoided the toll, but she thought we had gotten on it for a very short distance. But we didn’t actually “get on” anything, and we didn’t “get off” anything. We just drove straight along a highway we had driven before.

But then about a week later, I got a letter in the mail telling me I owed the toll for using the road. The letter included a picture of my truck using the toll road.

Toll Photo

Well, lookie there. Sure enough, I had driven on the toll road. Well, hell, how much did I owe?

45 cents. Forty. Five. Cents.

OK, that’s not bad. What, were we on the road for half a mile? I don’t know.

I had to sign the paper, write a check for forty-five cents, and then place a 46 cent stamp on the envelope to mail it back. Yeah, the stamp more than doubled my toll cost. I imagine the whole billing process must have cost the DOT more than the toll cost just to charge me. I mean, they had to pay postage to get the letter to me to begin with, plus the printing, and the administration, etc. State bureaucracy at work.

Bullgrit

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