Visiting Sonya Ann recently meant traveling into and through the great state of Illinois, specifically around the Chi-town area.
I have decided after this trip that the Illinois Tollway System is the biggest PITA I have ever experienced!
It is confusing and designed to make you, the user, have an aneurysm or a stroke if you don't live in Illinois and have an I-Pass account.
I-Pass is the Illinois toll paying account for using Illinois toll roadways. If you are from the East it's the same thing as an EZ-Pass. You have a transponder in your car and you load your account to pay for tolls electronically instead of having to stop at a toll booth and pay the old fashioned way, with cash monies.
Since we don't use many toll roads in our daily life(nor in our traveling life for personal use)neither Hubs or I have an EZ-Pass.
It works for us fine everywhere we go, except for THIS trip to Illinois!
Not only is the price of gasoline in this area sky high, they also extort you every few miles on the roadways by requiring you to pay tolls on the major roadways.
We stopped at each toll booth on our trip home through the tollway maze that is suburban Chicago, and paid with cash and got a receipt(I ALWAYS get receipts at toll booths when traveling, without fail!).
From entering Illinois until almost leaving the ChiTown area we paid $30.00 in tolls!
This included $2.80 toll when we mistakenly kept going down a road that turned into a toll road before we saw the sign on the way back from Milwaukee on an excursion.
Compared to the $15.75 it cost to cross the breadth of Ohio via the Turnpike or the $8.20 it cost to cross the breadth of Indiana on it's Tollway, just tooling around the Chicago 'burbs cost us $30+ in tolls!
Now which of these was the worst deal, huh?
We paid $30 in tolls while in Northern Illinois except we needed to pay $31.50.
When we were driving home and left I-294 to get onto I-57 to Southern IL there was NO toll booth!
You could only pay with I-Pass as you left at Toll Plaza 42 to get onto I-57.
Even in Indiana which is notorious for unmanned toll booths(on some less traveled exits)there may not be a person to take your cash but they have machines to insert cash and get change.
But this no toll booth deal was new to us.....
As you drove down this stretch of I-294 toward the exit in question, they had many signs on this stretch of roadway about having 7 days from the date of not paying this toll to go online to pay this toll or else some nefarious fate would befall you......
Way to go Illinois! Make your visitors feel all warm and fuzzy inside why dontcha!
So I sat down a couple of days ago at my computer and attempted to go online and pay this toll the state of Illinois forced us to not pay by not having a means to pay for out of state visitors who didn't foresee the need to have an I-Pass account.
Let me just say that if the traffic and congestion on the roads outside of Chicago isn't enough to cause you to foam at the mouth then trying to pay a "missed" toll in this clusterf**k of a system is!!!
First off, you have to remember the actual toll exit number/gate/plaza you didn't pay at.
Who the hell traveling from somewhere else has the presence of mind to commit to memory a toll plaze/exit number? lol
Of course, I DO recall many signs at the time with the AMOUNT we were suppose to pay but can't recall a single sign with a toll number for that spot.
Great!
All the signage on the roadway at the time said the toll due in question was .75¢.
And once I figured out the Toll Number 35 minutes after starting this process on their website, I discovered that the .75¢ is only if you pay through an I-Pass account. The cash rate is $1.50. None of the signs on the roadway at that time said anything about a higher cash rate until you go onto the IL website.
Thanks for giving only half the information!
So I have finally gotten this thing paid and can sleep at night without worrying the authorities from Illinois DOT will come kidnap me from my bed.
But really, I have to ask......WHY set up a system that attempts to trick out of state drivers into breaking your highway laws by not providing a system for said drivers to pay their highway usage fees at the time of use?
Next time I need to drive South from Chicago 'burbs I'll go west and THEN South on non-toll roads and avoid this Toll Hell!
So the moral of this story is the Highway Robbery & Chicanery is alive and doing quite well in Northern Illinois.
But then again I shouldn't be surprised as Chicago has a long held and hard-earned reputation as a World Capital of Thievery and Political Shenanigans......
Sluggy
I have decided after this trip that the Illinois Tollway System is the biggest PITA I have ever experienced!
It is confusing and designed to make you, the user, have an aneurysm or a stroke if you don't live in Illinois and have an I-Pass account.
I-Pass is the Illinois toll paying account for using Illinois toll roadways. If you are from the East it's the same thing as an EZ-Pass. You have a transponder in your car and you load your account to pay for tolls electronically instead of having to stop at a toll booth and pay the old fashioned way, with cash monies.
Since we don't use many toll roads in our daily life(nor in our traveling life for personal use)neither Hubs or I have an EZ-Pass.
It works for us fine everywhere we go, except for THIS trip to Illinois!
Not only is the price of gasoline in this area sky high, they also extort you every few miles on the roadways by requiring you to pay tolls on the major roadways.
We stopped at each toll booth on our trip home through the tollway maze that is suburban Chicago, and paid with cash and got a receipt(I ALWAYS get receipts at toll booths when traveling, without fail!).
From entering Illinois until almost leaving the ChiTown area we paid $30.00 in tolls!
This included $2.80 toll when we mistakenly kept going down a road that turned into a toll road before we saw the sign on the way back from Milwaukee on an excursion.
Compared to the $15.75 it cost to cross the breadth of Ohio via the Turnpike or the $8.20 it cost to cross the breadth of Indiana on it's Tollway, just tooling around the Chicago 'burbs cost us $30+ in tolls!
Now which of these was the worst deal, huh?
We paid $30 in tolls while in Northern Illinois except we needed to pay $31.50.
When we were driving home and left I-294 to get onto I-57 to Southern IL there was NO toll booth!
You could only pay with I-Pass as you left at Toll Plaza 42 to get onto I-57.
Even in Indiana which is notorious for unmanned toll booths(on some less traveled exits)there may not be a person to take your cash but they have machines to insert cash and get change.
But this no toll booth deal was new to us.....
As you drove down this stretch of I-294 toward the exit in question, they had many signs on this stretch of roadway about having 7 days from the date of not paying this toll to go online to pay this toll or else some nefarious fate would befall you......
Way to go Illinois! Make your visitors feel all warm and fuzzy inside why dontcha!
So I sat down a couple of days ago at my computer and attempted to go online and pay this toll the state of Illinois forced us to not pay by not having a means to pay for out of state visitors who didn't foresee the need to have an I-Pass account.
Let me just say that if the traffic and congestion on the roads outside of Chicago isn't enough to cause you to foam at the mouth then trying to pay a "missed" toll in this clusterf**k of a system is!!!
First off, you have to remember the actual toll exit number/gate/plaza you didn't pay at.
Who the hell traveling from somewhere else has the presence of mind to commit to memory a toll plaze/exit number? lol
Of course, I DO recall many signs at the time with the AMOUNT we were suppose to pay but can't recall a single sign with a toll number for that spot.
Great!
All the signage on the roadway at the time said the toll due in question was .75¢.
And once I figured out the Toll Number 35 minutes after starting this process on their website, I discovered that the .75¢ is only if you pay through an I-Pass account. The cash rate is $1.50. None of the signs on the roadway at that time said anything about a higher cash rate until you go onto the IL website.
Thanks for giving only half the information!
So I have finally gotten this thing paid and can sleep at night without worrying the authorities from Illinois DOT will come kidnap me from my bed.
But really, I have to ask......WHY set up a system that attempts to trick out of state drivers into breaking your highway laws by not providing a system for said drivers to pay their highway usage fees at the time of use?
Next time I need to drive South from Chicago 'burbs I'll go west and THEN South on non-toll roads and avoid this Toll Hell!
So the moral of this story is the Highway Robbery & Chicanery is alive and doing quite well in Northern Illinois.
But then again I shouldn't be surprised as Chicago has a long held and hard-earned reputation as a World Capital of Thievery and Political Shenanigans......
Sluggy
