A familiar convenience for many commuters turned 20 years old this week. Saturday marked the 20th anniversary of E-ZPass interoperability, the system that allows drivers paying for tolls with E-ZPass in one state to use it in others.
Launched in 1993 with seven toll facilities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the E-ZPass interagency group sought to form a regionally compatible electronic toll collection system that both streamlined toll payment for motorists and cut down on traffic jams often seen at toll booths.
P.J. Wilkins, Executive Director of the E-ZPass Group says the program has grown significantly over the past 20 years.
“We’re now 25 toll agencies. in 15 states. stretching from Maine down to North Carolina. and out west to Illinois.”
Delaware is one of those states, joining the network in 1999. Department of Motor Vehicles officials say the system's biggest benefit comes from high speed E-ZPass lanes. State Route 1’s toll plaza at Biddles Corner has had them since it opened 1999. The Route 1 Dover Plaza added them in 2005. High speed lanes came to I-95 just two years ago.
“It reduces the congestion and volume that you normally experience in a backup at a cash lane at any toll plaza. So with all three of our toll plazas having the high speed EZ Pass lane that you can go through without stopping, that’s where we see the greatest benefit," said DMV Communications Chief Mike Williams.
Williams adds that move to include them on I-95 helped untangled the terrible traffic snarls that regularly occurred, especially during holiday travel.
“Since that point, the backups have virtually disappeared on I-95 even during the heaviest travel days of the year, because before this happened, the cash customer and the EZ Pass customer still had to mix together,” said Williams.
It's a far cry from the early days of E-ZPass when concerns about it being able to track a person's movements or even result in a speeding ticket if you made it from one plaza to another too quickly.
“They do not do speed enforcement on the highways. Nobody tracks where you got on and off and at what speeds and sends a ticket. We just don’t allow the system to be used for that,” said Wilkins.
The E-ZPass Group reports there are more than 25 million transponders currently in use, and last year more than 2.4 billion transactions were processed, which now also includes parking at some airports and garages.
In Delaware, Williams says there are 195,000 registered E-ZPass accounts.
EZ Pass officials say they hope to expand the program nationwide within the next five years.