We’ve consulted the judges, tallied the scores, checked and rechecked the figures, and we are ready to tackle our first favorites post of the great Road Trip Almost Without End now that it’s ended (for some reason I always hear “It’s over Belle” in my head when thinking about the end of the trip).
The category is: favorite tollway state (for some reason I always whisper that in my head. Perhaps a few too many episodes of Password).
Okay, we got our first tollway bill and it just happens to be from our winner – drumroll please – Massachusetts. They are the winner because they caused the least disruption – it was all automatic from beginning to end, just a little sign that you were on a tollway.
We encountered our first tollway in Pennsylvania and they still had the toll booth infrastructure in place, but with one of those flashing roadside signs telling us to ignore it as they were all electronic now. Nobody did, we all crept up to the booth and then stopped and stared at the empty booth before zooming on. After that first one, I went through as fast as I was able, but there were plenty of people who kept acting like they were going to have to physically pay a toll.
New York was the worst because it had a mix of automatic plate readers and physical booths (half of which gave you a ticket and the other half that took your money, and one pair we didn’t have to pay at all but took it still took just as long) plus the construction where they were taking out toll booths and then a mile or two down the road where they were installing automatic plate readers both of which slowed down traffic – you just never knew what was coming and you had to slow down twice as often.
Maine was simply annoying – but at least it was all physical. They had a 3 dollar toll near the New Hampshire border and a 1 dollar toll up north. No doubt it was because they wanted to get all the money from the tourists down south but the aggravation of stopping to pay a 1 dollar toll almost, almost won them the worst spot.
The only redeeming feature of the toll booths was the Ben Hur-esque experience of pulling away – all those drivers after separating into many lanes were all trying to beat the other drivers back into two lanes. Boy did I want to whip the horses and the other drivers, only there were no horses or whips, mores the pity.
And the picture is in honor of Mr. Revere who didn’t pay no stinking tolls on his great road trip.
UPDATE: New York is also the most inept since 6 months later we have never received a bill from them.
