Getting around town these days means either fighting traffic on I-4 or spending toll money on the Expressway Authority toll roads. With my commute, I get to deal with both roads. In the morning, I take I-4 down to my gym. After a workout, I continue down I-4 to the 408 towards work. After work, it's 408 to 417 to get back home. It's about a 50 mile round trip.
One of the nice things about the Expressway roads is not having to deal with the deadlocked traffic. Of course, the tolls aren't cheap. My commute cost me a little over $100 in tolls last month. It's getting to be a little more annoying lately, though. My transponder from SunPass isn't getting reloaded lately. When I checked their website, I found this little note:
We are currently experiencing delays in the downloading of toll and replenishment type transactions.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Your account will be updated to reflect any recent transactions as quickly as possible.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Hey, at least they apologize for any inconvenience. So what's inconvenient? The fact that I'm going through the pay booths instead of the transponder lanes. Even though I'm paying in cash (and not getting the discounts associated with the transponder accounts), my transponder is giving me warnings that it has an insufficient balance. Honestly, I didn't think anything about that. At least, not until I checked my account.
My account is -$2.57 now. How is that possible, when all the tolls are in $.25 increments? It seems that I lost $.43 on my transponder when I paid at a $.50 toll. It wasn't enough to pay the toll, but they sucked the money out of my account. Since I paid at the booth, that one cost me $.93. Ok, it's not big money. It's just enough to be annoying.
So why is the SunPass system having a problem replenishing accounts? When will my account get replenished so things can start working normally? One of my tolls is $1.50 on the transponder, but costs $2.00 for cash customers. You'd think someone would be a phone number on the Expressway Authority account page, but it's not there. I may have to use the dreaded phone book.
As if this weren't enough, they want to raise the tolls. I understand that's because we have more roads to build and someone has to pay. Wait, I'm already paying. I don't need another road, unless they want to replace my commute on I-4.