CLEVELAND — For many traveling on this day before Thanksgiving, the trip is made easier by their appropriately named E-Z Pass.
"Super easy, yeah, we don't even have to stop, we just go straight through. It's nice," said Stephanie Schultz, who was driving to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Ray Casambre comes from Illinois, one of several states that have eliminated toll booths altogether.
"In fact, you don't even need your E-Z Pass in Illinois. It will recognize your plate and then it'll deduct it from your balance," he said.
New York and Pennsylvania have also gone the all-electronic route. Ohio though is making the move to more of a hybrid method, Open Road Tolling.
"That means that people with an E-ZPass will not have to stop at all and just keep going straight through," said Ohio Turnpike Executive Director Ferzan Ahmed. And people without an E-Z Pass will have the opportunity to veer off to the side and go through a gate and still get their tickets."
If you’ve traveled the Ohio Turnpike east of Cleveland near Lordstown over the past year and a half, you’ve noticed the construction of the new Mainline Toll Plaza. It’s one of four being added. In addition, seven of the 31 toll plazas are being eliminated.
The full switchover is still a few weeks away, once all testing of the system is complete.
"We are going to be ready to roll it out very soon," Ahmed said. "What's left is the configuration. We've got hundreds of pieces of equipment throughout the Ohio Turnpike right now that are looking at vehicles and classifying those vehicles by the number of axles, that is, looking at camera images, license plates, and with so many vehicles being at different heights, those cameras have to perform in an optimal way.
"Once we have a certain comfort level that we are happy with the way the system is configured, with the way the cameras are pointing, how the software is capturing the image and transferring it, that's when we'll start phasing in the new system."
One of the changes drivers will notice this weekend is not having to deal with any more toll gates in the E-Z-Pass-only lanes; most have been removed, allowing you to roll through at 10 miles an hour.
Turnpike officials say having an E-Z Pass and not having to stop not only keeps you safer, but it also saves you money, as E-Z Pass users get a 33% discount.
"So here's an interesting dilemma for us: we are encouraging people [to use a system] that actually puts less money in our coffers," Ahmed said. "And the reason we are doing that is it makes travel more seamless and ultimately safer, and that's our objective."
There are a number of reasons Ohio didn't go the all-electronic route. One was Ohio's E-Z Pass usage is lower than many of those other states, which makes it harder to collect using a toll-by-plate system. But they say there's also the aspect of the toll collector jobs those other states have entirely eliminated.
"You know, when we talk about toll collection systems, we sometimes forget about the human element," Ahmed said. Still, this new system will require fewer toll collectors, something they've been working to address by not filling open jobs.
"By allowing our numbers to go down through attrition, we will have the right number of people when the new system goes in so that everybody can continue to have a fruitful career at the Ohio Turnpike," Ahmed said.
