Saturday, July 2, 2011

Taking on the car-pool ez pass option

There is a little know secret cash saver the MTA announced a few years ago with little fanfare when the MTA introduced a discount for EZ-Pass members when riding in a car pool when crossing from NJ into NYC. This applied to all the Hudson River crossings including the GWB, Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel and Goethals Bridge and discounts the rate from $8 down to $2 if you are in a car with 3 or more people.
What sounds like a good piece of legislation to encourage car-pooling has been completely hidden within the MTA pricing plans and must be applied for separately for each EZ Pass tag as it doesn't just come with the EZPass account. That in itself is ridiculous enough being that it actually makes it difficult to car-pool and you have to find it hidden on their website and register your tag. So a program to encourage energy conservation is not advertised and then actually signing up for it is difficult but that isn't the biggest complaint about this program. The biggest issue is what comes after you have specifically registered you tag and you got to try to use in practice. See in order to use it to get the discount you must go to the cash lane, roll down your window and tell the attendant that you intend to use the carpool fare and then he or she must verify that you indeed have three or more people in your car. So in other words, although you have an EZ pass to avoid traffic congestion you can't use the EZ Pass lanes when you are trying to carpool to avoid traffic congestion.

Only in America do they deign two programs to cut carbon emission which completely contradict each other in practice.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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