Ignoring the morals for a second, with tolls that high and difficulty identifying which vehicles qualify for a HOV exemption, I wonder how many days of tolls a single ticket is and likelihood of being caught?
Let's say a ticket is $150. If the toll is $6 then you're likely better off paying the toll as you're likely to be caught at least once every 25 days. At $40 they'd need to catch you at least once a week for you to lose money. The $150 amount is fictional, I don't know what the ticket would cost, more just a thought experiment.
In any regard, when tolls are this high, you have to consider issues like this. What works for a $4-6 toll doesn't scale to $40 unless the tickets also scale.
When I was younger, and new to the city, I used to park in a car park where the fines were $22, but to park for a full day was $20.
I got a few tickets. Let me tell you, escalation of parking violations in my state are no joke. I forgot about one or two of them just before I moved, so by the time they found me again they had made their way through the court system and had been there a couple of months. A hefty $300 levy is applied immediately, and failure to pay the fine is now failure to pay a state fine not a council fine, with the next steps being another $750, then suspension of vehicle services (can't register your car) then finally suspension of your drivers license, and you can't travel abroad. Times this all by two for two tickets.
The suspension of my drivers license was how I found out about this silent tsunami of infractions building up toward me, and when it broke across the shore, I was left stranded with my car and yet another $1000 fine for driving unlicensed (news to me).
I repealed and the whole situation went away, as I never recieved any of the letters and was unaware.
I do think it's ridiculous a $20 parking fine is allowed to escalate that far, but I suppose it worked, as I pay my tickets now.
This is a pretty standard way of how governments enforce their authority. Each demand is backed with the threat of a bigger punishment, ultimately ending with incarceration. I wonder if there is any alternative strategy that is "better"? Dings on credit score? Automatic garnishment of wage / tax return?
In practice, however, most of the issues arise from people not getting the notices in time due to moving, clerical errors, etc. Unfortunately, there is very little recourse (and a lot of hassle) if the state makes a mistake.
They combat this fairly smartly: the fine starts at $125 and doubles with every incident, up into the thousands. This was the case before this toll road, circa 2013 ish.
When the I-66 HOV lanes originally opened, there was a problem of some percentage of drivers being willing to risk an $X citation (and the delay while being written up) every few months in exchange for using the road every day.
The solution that VA put in place to combat that is that the HOV violation citation not only has a money cost, but second or subsequent infractions within a five year window result in assessment of points [1] against your drivers license. Only a small number of points [2] is necessary to risk losing your license.
Do they not have e-tags, cameras and registrations in this part of the world?
I genuinely ask, since my assumption when using toll roads here is that the fine would find you pretty much as soon as you use the road...marginal errors and bugs aside.
On this road, they're using e-tags that have a "HOV" switch on them. If you set it to "HOV mode", you're not charged a toll. The tag can't actually know how many people are in the car, so someone could cheat by setting their tag to HOV and driving without anyone else in the car. Hence the actual officers-pulling-people-over enforcement required. (They have readers in the police cars that tell them whether a vehicle's transponder is in HOV mode or not.)
Do you need a tag to carpool where you are? Here in MN you do not, so it makes the HOV difficult to enforce, particularly because our Supreme Court decided you cannot be ticketed by camera. You basically have to have a cop car come up beside you.
You're supposed to have it now to get on this highway. Before there was no toll on it but it was all HOV-only during certain times of day. Now it is HOV or single drivers can pay apparently up to $40 use it too. Other roads in the area have manned toll plazas which accept cash.
I think the likelihood of getting caught is close to 100% each day. HOV policing is an extremely high priority in the DC area and because of dedicated highways like this, also extremely easy and profitable for police. Also, I believe fines start around $250 and quickly move to $1000. There is a whole informal system of carpooling called "slugs" that works with the system. That'd be your best bet. Or, at $70 round trip, you can literally hire someone to wait around for 8 hours on minimum wage and still get off cheaper. $7.50 x 8 = $60.
> hire someone to wait around for 8 hours on minimum wage and still get off cheaper. $7.50 x 8 = $60.
Hah. If slug lines wren't a thing, it would be a startup idea -
"hire a perma-slug". They go to work with you, file papers and bring you coffee or maybe they get to hang out in museums during the day. Then you go home in the evening with them.
If slug lines weren't a thing, you could probably make it an uber-like thing were you can hire a slug (who might be just going in the same direction anyway, or just needs a few bucks) just for the occasion. No need to hold someone up the whole day.
They've got multiple camera stations and EZ Pass scanners so they'll just mail you the bill now. Before a cop had to pull you over to catch you cheating in the HOV lane.
Let's say a ticket is $150. If the toll is $6 then you're likely better off paying the toll as you're likely to be caught at least once every 25 days. At $40 they'd need to catch you at least once a week for you to lose money. The $150 amount is fictional, I don't know what the ticket would cost, more just a thought experiment.
In any regard, when tolls are this high, you have to consider issues like this. What works for a $4-6 toll doesn't scale to $40 unless the tickets also scale.