ladies and gentlemen: we have toll roads
may 16, 2005 @
23:59
link
Today was the first day that the carpool lanes on 394 were open to single-rider vehicles willing to pay for the privilege of driving on them. Today was also the first day that I kicked myself for not immediately getting off my ass and buying one of the pre-paid fare transponders that are the only acceptable method of payment. (I say 'fare transponder', but really the thing is called a 'MnPass'. That name is dumb, however, so I'm trying not to use it. Better names would have been 'BlueOxPass', 'TicketToRide', or 'PayPal'.)
To be fair, I never planned on buying a MnPass. The last thing I need is some money machine in my car tempting me to spend $4 to save 6 minutes on my commute. I have a hard enough time walking passed the Twix cabinet at the office without going face-down in cookie crunch, so I'm sure I'd cave when pressed for time on the ride home. Resistance is futile.
And then today it rained. And when it rains, traffic sucks. And when traffic sucks I take my sneaky back way out of downtown, a route that normally skips me far enough down the road that I don't get caught up in anything major. Well today it avoided jack squat. I got to the bottom of the entrance ramp and looked up at the freeway and all I could see were red taillights. And they weren't the "headlights on for safety" red that I was hoping they'd be, they were an endless ocean of "stop and go" red. Curses.
Then I looked over at the new MnPass scoreboard that lists the real time dynamic fare for using the HOV lanes.
And it said $0.25 to Hwy 100.
Twent-ee-five-effing-cents. That's only half a Twix bar.
I thought about throwing a quarter at the sign and pleading stupidity if I got pulled over, but there were like 4 news helicopters hovering overhead and I was worried I'd get caught on tape and labeled the "dumbass in the jeep who didn't know you had to buy a pass". And you know they'd replay that clip a million times because everyone loves a dumbass. Well screw you Fox9, I know I need the pass, I just didn't think it would be so cheap so I didn't bother to get one.
But I will now. Hells yeah.
Get Your MnPass [mnpass]
Minnesota's first electronic toll road opens [pipress]
Adi thought:
You know what happens when a load of people do the same dumb thing!... Soon enough there would be the same deal .. traffic jam on the HOV. ha!.. what would they do next.. fly over lanes!
dave thought:
it's called congestion pricing. rich people love it.
Ryan thought:
A wild turkey ran out in front of me yesterday as I was driving to work. I had to slow down to like 50mph. It added 6 seconds on to my commute. I can relate and feel for you. Hang in there.
Chris Hanson thought:
Ryan-
I got cut off by some putz in a hugantic SUV talking on a cell phone who had to get to Starbucks NOW gotta love yuppie Park City sometimes... I think it cost me 4 seconds... now I have cut someone off on the way home just to make up for it... or something :-)
Dave-
you know if you weird people on the west side didn't complain that they didn't want the lightrail to go through their neighborhood MN might not need to change HOV lanes into pesudo tool roads.
-CH