Will Sunpass work on EZPass lanes in Virginia and Maryland?

[Joe The Dragon]

Thanks everyone... so now I won't go through any toll areas outside of Fla. and just hope I don't have a brain lapse up north and accidentally fly through without thinking.  The map is very useful and I hope they keep it updated.  Why does this all have to be so confusing.. more stuff to have to remember.  I know Florida is working on changing their default license plate design to make it easier to read by the cameras, and thus eliminating the jobs of the toll collectors.  They should just phase out the whole Sunpass thing and make it all EZPass..

Depending on where you plan to be driving, avoiding that "brain lapse" can be more important than you might realize. Some E-ZPass facilities still maintain the toll-machine arms in the E-ZPass Only lanes that were converted from machine-style exact-change lanes, meaning you have to slow almost to a complete stop until your E-ZPass registers and the arm goes up. The Dulles Greenway in Virginia, for example, uses that style because the space they were allowed to have for the toll plaza is limited, so they want to maintain maximum flexibility to change whether a given lane is full-service, exact change, or E-ZPass Only.

I don't travel to New York as often as I used to, so I don't know whether this statement is still accurate, but I recall pretty much all of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority facilities continued to use the arms (presumably to try to prevent toll cheats from speeding through).

In either case, a SunPass will not trigger the arm to go up and you will have a lot of very enraged drivers behind you if you mistakenly enter one of those lanes.

Why not set it to gate up when in ETC only mode?

[Joe The Dragon]

how far apart are toll barriers, anyway?

Right now, on long "closed" (ticket) toll roads like the Pennsylvania Turnpike or the Ohio Turnpike, it can be hundreds of miles between an entrance barrier and an exit barrier (consider driving the entire ticket system of the Penn Pike, from Warrendale (I-79) near Pittsburgh to the mainline barrier at Bristol (U.S. 13) just short of the Delaware River and the New Jersey border).  According to Google, that's between 325 and 330 miles.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike is planning to convert to all electronic tolling (cashless), which will mean a "barrier" between each interchange.

Md. 200 (ICC) has "barriers" (a gantry) between every interchange, and some of them are not more than a mile or two apart (some others are a little further apart, bit the road is not that long, only between 15 and 20 miles.

so PA is going to be like the EOE? Why dump the ticket based zones even full under ETC? unless they want to rework a lot of ramps to flow better.

[vdeane]

Thanks everyone... so now I won't go through any toll areas outside of Fla. and just hope I don't have a brain lapse up north and accidentally fly through without thinking.  The map is very useful and I hope they keep it updated.  Why does this all have to be so confusing.. more stuff to have to remember.  I know Florida is working on changing their default license plate design to make it easier to read by the cameras, and thus eliminating the jobs of the toll collectors.  They should just phase out the whole Sunpass thing and make it all EZPass..

Depending on where you plan to be driving, avoiding that "brain lapse" can be more important than you might realize. Some E-ZPass facilities still maintain the toll-machine arms in the E-ZPass Only lanes that were converted from machine-style exact-change lanes, meaning you have to slow almost to a complete stop until your E-ZPass registers and the arm goes up. The Dulles Greenway in Virginia, for example, uses that style because the space they were allowed to have for the toll plaza is limited, so they want to maintain maximum flexibility to change whether a given lane is full-service, exact change, or E-ZPass Only.

I don't travel to New York as often as I used to, so I don't know whether this statement is still accurate, but I recall pretty much all of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority facilities continued to use the arms (presumably to try to prevent toll cheats from speeding through).

In either case, a SunPass will not trigger the arm to go up and you will have a lot of very enraged drivers behind you if you mistakenly enter one of those lanes.

Why not set it to gate up when in ETC only mode?

The booths with the gate arms don't have cameras to catch toll violators.

[8.Lug]

The posts you guys are replying to are 3 years old.

WJXT-Channel 4: South Carolina could be next for Sunpass

Motorists may be able to use their Florida SunPass transponders on South Carolina's toll roads in the coming months and on drives between Kansas and Texas in about a year, according to a newsletter sent out Tuesday to SunPass customers.

"We expect that by late summer you will be able to use your SunPass transponder for your next trip to Hilton Head Island!" Florida's Turnpike Enterprise Executive Director Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti said in the newsletter. "Also, by this time next year, we hope to have connected our SunPass Customer Service Center with the Central U.S. Interoperability Hub in Texas."

The state continues to work with E-ZPass agencies -- spread across 16 states in the Northeast and Midwest -- to link the technologies, Gutierrez-Scaccetti wrote.

"E-ZPass agencies do not yet have the capability to read SunPass," Gutierrez-Scaccetti wrote.

This should really have its own thread.

[1995hoo]

cp's post is the one to which I was replying. He posted yesterday.

[roadman]

Here's an example of a toll gantry on the Beltway in Virginia (picture taken last November the Monday before Thanksgiving).

Using a cantilever support for ETC readers and video cameras is a bad design choice, if you ask me.  Not only is the wind moment on the arm greater than you would have with a full span, but over time the additional vibration will affect the reliability of the reading equipment.  I've been told that the ETC gantries being installed on the Mass. Pike were specified as full span, and in some cases complete span (i.e. over the entire width of the roadway), structures to avoid such issues.

[1995hoo]

Here's an example of a toll gantry on the Beltway in Virginia (picture taken last November the Monday before Thanksgiving).

Using a cantilever support for ETC readers and video cameras is a bad design choice, if you ask me.  Not only is the wind moment on the arm greater than you would have with a full span, but over time the additional vibration will affect the reliability of the reading equipment.  I've been told that the ETC gantries being installed on the Mass. Pike were specified as full span, and in some cases complete span (i.e. over the entire width of the roadway), structures to avoid such issues.

That post is from 2013, but anyway, that carriageway is a total of six lanes there (two HO/T lanes seen in this picture, then four general-purpose lanes to the right). Actually, I believe the deceleration lane for the right-side exit up ahead begins on the far right at roughly this point, too. Either way, I have no doubt they didn't want to put something spanning the entire six lanes when only two lanes are tolled. The Massachusetts Turnpike example is obviously a different scenario in that respect.

[roadman]

That post is from 2013, but anyway, that carriageway is a total of six lanes there (two HO/T lanes seen in this picture, then four general-purpose lanes to the right). Actually, I believe the deceleration lane for the right-side exit up ahead begins on the far right at roughly this point, too. Either way, I have no doubt they didn't want to put something spanning the entire six lanes when only two lanes are tolled. The Massachusetts Turnpike example is obviously a different scenario in that respect.

Good points.  I can see the rationale for using a cantilever support in this instance.  As long as they are prepared to periodically tweak the readers as necessary, it shouldn't be a major problem.  For one thing, it's not like they have a VMS on the arm.