The stickers typically go on your windshield, near the rearview mirror, and they have tiny electronic gizmos in them that communicate with toll readers on overhead sign frames. ¦ Speaking of toll tags: Our state, continuing the theme of confusion, has three flavors of toll tags. Better to just bite the bullet and get a toll tag. So it will get harder and harder to figure whose tollway you're driving on. 290 at Oak Hill and one near Circle C that would be called Texas 45 Southwest. And the authority is planning tollways on U.S. 290 in Northeast Austin and will also build toll lanes on MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) in the next few years. The mobility authority has a second tollway under construction on U.S. Fortunately, those bills will be handled at the TxTag center by the same contractor assigned to the TxDOT toll roads. Late this year, the southern 40 miles of Texas 130 will open, and that part of the road, under a decades-long lease with TxDOT, is being built and will be operated by a private consortium led by a Spanish tollway company called Cintra. Their toll billing notices for those who don't have a tag are handled by two private companies, which means that a lot of people call the wrong place first and have to be sent to the other one. TxDOT owns and operates Texas 130, Loop 1, Texas 45 North and Texas 45 Southeast, and the mobility authority is the proprietor of the 183-A tollway in Cedar Park and Leander. ¦ Different toll agencies: Austin has those five toll roads but two toll road owners. Irritating, but reasonable, especially compared with the bill for our friends in Houston.Īlong that line, with Austin's toll road era now in its sixth year and a lot of new folks here, just a few reminders about our "system": So, for three of those 67-cent tolls, the total bill would be a little over $3. And although the toll is higher than with a toll tag - a 45-cent toll for those with a tag instead costs 67 cents for pay-by-mail, for example - the total administrative fee for each bill is $1 to $1.15, depending on whether you drove on the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority's tollway or on the four that belong to the Texas Department of Transportation. If you drive on one of Austin's five toll roads without a toll tag, you won't get a violation notice, you'll get a bill. Perhaps postage is higher down in Houston.Īnyway, this is one of those cases where living in often pricey Austin actually carries a lower cost of living. For $11 per toll, they ought to personally deliver the bill to your house, then scratch your dog's belly and maybe tidy up the living room while you go get your checkbook. But each one of these "toll violations" carried an $11 administrative fee. The tolls themselves weren't much: 50 cents for one and 38 cents for two others.
Austin toll tag license#
Mark and Jane don't have a TxTag, or any kind of electronic toll tag, so the system had photographed their license plate and dunned them by mail. Mark and his wife, Jane, taking Interstate 10's high-occupancy vehicle lanes on an April trip to Houston, had not realized that those lanes are toll-only on the weekend. No exclamation marks, but they were there by implication. The letter to my friend Mark from the Harris County Toll Road Authority had an ominous heading: "First and FINAL Notice." Gotta love the all-caps there.
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