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Originally Posted by mcdude
I have been trying to find the source but it escapes me. I read of someone travelling up the east coast and at each toll booth the EZ Pass lanes were all backed up with long lines....but since he was paying with cash, and the lines were shorter there, he breezed right through. I figure I pay $12 per month in tolls (which is $6 with the tokens). If I can breeze through the tolls more quickly by paying cash (and $6 extra per month) it would be worth it to me not be sitting in line with the rest of the suckers. As it is now, the pay-as-you-go booths (any vehicle), rather than the exact change lanes, are most usually much shorter IMO. Time will tell!
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My experience with EZ-pass up and down the east coast has been that the EZ pass lines are *always* much shorter than any of the cash lines. I think the throughput is so much larger (no stopping, no change) that they can just push so many more cars through that it's amazing. Plus of course they can add or remove EZ-pass lanes as needed.
That said having a different discount amount for tokens and EZ-pass can only hurt EZ-pass adoption if the EZ-pass demand is elastic.
I have to agree that sometimes the non-exact change lanes are faster. But only sometimes. At those times the lines that move the fastest are the lines with buses or trucks in them because of their length. (I.e. they pay once but take up the same roadway as 3 cars).