Taking a heavy toll / Tollway aggressively chases accused scofflaws, regardless of cracks in enforcement system
Source: By Joseph Ryan, Daily Herald (IL), January 6, 2008
.......... The violation enforcement system is key to Gov. Rod Blagojevich's new Open Road Tolling initiative, which eliminated barrier toll plazas for highway-speed I-PASS lanes that rely on cameras and heavy fines to keep drivers paying.
The tollway botched a critical element of the system when it failed to send out violation notices for the 13 months between July 2006 and August 2007.
Tollway officials blame the delay on a mix-up after switching companies that run the violation enforcement system.
.......Officials with the new company, Texas-based Electronic Transaction Consultants, said they didn't expect the switchover to cause such a long delay, but it couldn't be avoided.
....... In 2002, the state's auditor general blasted tollway officials for failing to routinely send out violations over the previous two years. Tollway officials said at the time the job of sifting through scofflaw license plate pictures and matching them in a license database was too complex for in-house staff.
They hired TransCore to do it for $38 million over three years.
Related article from the Daily Herald: Critics call for reform of toll collection system