RELATED: Why some TxTag customers are getting pay-by-mail bills in errorĪs of last week, that blunder hadn’t been fully solved, and its reach hadn’t been conclusively calculated, officials briefed on it told me. The recent news that some Texas toll systems have been wrongly sending bills (at higher toll rates) to thousands if not millions of tag holders no doubt will only intensify that animus and suspicion. And perhaps some don’t trust the billing system, either through electronic toll tags on windshields or the pay-by-mail option. The whole concept of paying a fee to drive just ticks off a subset of the driverati, to be genteel about it. It even rankles him to be a passenger in a car on a tollway heading to our out-of-town games (a little piece of heaven, that), when someone else is paying the toll. One of them is a colleague on my football officiating crew. In the Rio Grande Valley, Mexican drivers without toll tags make up only a small part of the traffic on the tolled State Highway 550, but the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority isn TMt able to bill them, either.Even now, almost 11 years into the Central Texas tollway era, I have friends who wouldn’t drive on a toll road if were paved in purest gold and led directly to the Pearly Gates. However, he said, such enforcement methods are too costly to justify with lost revenue from foreign drivers so low.Įl Paso isn TMt the only border community running into this issue. If the agency TMs inability to bill Mexican drivers becomes a larger problem, Telles said, the mobility authority could partner with the El Paso Police Department to use automated license plate readers to catch cars that frequently drive on the roads without paying. TxDOT and the local mobility authority plan to build two more tolled roads in El Paso: an additional highway near the border and another route in the north of the city. The Harris County Toll Road Authority doesn TMt allow users to register cars with foreign license plates.Ĭonstruction is already underway on another tolled highway in El Paso ” the Border West Expressway, a more than $600 million project that aims to better connect the east and west sides of the city, Telles said. The North Texas Tollway Authority has about 40 electronic payment accounts associated with Mexican addresses, although spokesman Michael Rey said he couldn TMt say how many cars are associated with those accounts. More than 5,300 cars with Mexican license plates are registered with Texas Department of Transportation toll tag accounts. Some Mexican drivers have purchased tags to pay Texas tolls electronically, but it’s tough to know how many because three separate agencies oversee electronic tolling. Mexican drivers are not charged unless they have a toll tag, Telles said. The local mobility authority, which oversees pay-by-mail tolling, can’t send bills to drivers with Mexican license plates because it doesn’t have access to addresses associated with them. Drivers who use the lanes must have an electronic toll tag or their license plate is photographed and the driver mailed a bill. Like many other tolled roads in Texas, they have no toll booths. Before they opened, several local politicians, including Pickett and former El Paso Mayor John Cook, opposed the tolls because they would be enforceable only for U.S. The first two tolled lanes in El Paso were added last year along a nine-mile, four-lane stretch of Loop 375 along the border. It will be a matter of time before people figure out if you TMve got a foreign license plate, you TMre not going to get a bill. If more and more people with foreign license plates figure out there TMs no way for us to enforce it, then I think you will see more people from Jurez using it, said Pickett, chairman of the House Committee on Transportation. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, said he anticipates an jump in the number of drivers from Ciudad Jurez, Mexico, using the tolled lanes. The number of Mexican plates using the roadway are significantly smaller than we thought.”īut as the number of tolled roads in the U.S.-Mexico border city increases “and more foreign drivers learn they can use them for free ” state Rep. The numbers for Mexican users are so low that it TMs really not a problem, said Raymond Telles, who heads the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority. Vehicles with Mexican license plates that the agency can’t bill have made up roughly one percent of the traffic on El Paso’s only two toll lanes since they opened in January 2014. drivers will be required to pay.īut the head of the local tolling authority says the issue hasn TMt resulted in significant lost revenue for existing toll roads. As El Paso prepares to open new toll roads, officials’ inability to mail bills to Mexican drivers means only U.S.
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