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Slow your speed, get a break on I-PASSFebruary 16, 2001 BY ROBERT C. HERGUTH TRANSPORTATION REPORTER
I-PASS users who obey speed limits could someday get a break on tolls. Rob Sherman, a well-known atheist-activist who attended the tollway board's Thursday meeting, said the agency should determine how long it takes to drive at legal speeds between toll plazas. Then, the agency should gauge how long it takes all I-PASS subscribers to travel those distances, he said. If drivers aren't speeding, based on the time-distance calculations, they should get a 5- or 10-cent break on tolls, Sherman proposed. The agency would be able to electronically measure real-time travel through the existing windshield-mounted I-PASS transponders, which automatically deduct tolls from participating motorists' pre-paid accounts when they pass through toll booths. Art Philip, the tollway's chairman, said the idea is worth studying. "I like it," he said. "It's a positive incentive instead of a negative incentive. I certainly will [ask] staff to look at it. I'm not sure if we have the ability to do it. . . . We have to be sensitive to the Big Brother" appearance. Sherman, who thought of the plan after last month's fatal Interstate 55 crash involving a Salvation Army van, said the tollway already has the ability to track I-PASS subscribers' movements, and he's not worried about abuse. But it's important that police aren't allowed to use the information to nab speeders, he said. "The government should offer a discount to those people who make their movements in a lawful manner--those few people," he said, adding speed limits ought to be raised in some areas, as well. "I try to obey the speed limit, and as a reward I get the finger dance."
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