Fast Lane users fuming about monthly fee

Were you one of the people who dropped $600 on an iPhone, and then felt like a chump when they lowered the price for everyone else?

More than 700,000 Massachusetts Turnpike commuters now share your agita. Only worse. Early adopters who bought a Fast Lane transponder over the past decade are getting squeezed on both ends.

They had to pay full price when they bought one, and soon, they'll have a new monthly fee.

The Turnpike Authority announced last week that the new 50-cents-a-month charge will go into effect June 1 for everyone with a Fast Lane account. The principle, beyond the amount, is what's galling to many commuters.

The authority's news release emphasized a new "reform," handing out transponders for free beginning Feb. 15 and crediting the former $25.95 cost of those transponders to anyone who bought them 30 days before that. The new fee was mentioned toward the bottom of the news release.

But what if you already paid the money for a transponder before that 30-day window? No luck. You can get a free replacement transponder when your battery runs out after eight or 10 years, or if it breaks. But no refund or credit on the money you already spent, even though you have to pay a new monthly service fee.

Commuters are angry.

"If you're going to change the rules in the middle of the game, you should let people either have a credit or be exempt from" the monthly fee, said Rob Mastria, 25, of Bridgewater, who bought a transponder six or seven years ago.

Alan LeBovidge, the Pike's executive director, said at a meeting last week that the policy change was designed to encourage more people to use Fast Lane, not to make more money.

"We're not looking to make money on it, but we want to make sure we're not increasing the deficit," he said.

But it looks like the agency will in fact make money. The Pike will take in $4 million to $5 million a year from the fees, and should be able to reduce its workforce of toll takers as it persuades more drivers to paying electronically. Officials did not say how much money they would lose by giving away the transponders.

James A. Aloisi Jr., board chairman and Governor Deval Patrick's new transportation secretary, said that over the course of a year, the fee will cost a commuter no more than the turkey sandwich he just had for lunch.

Activist Michael Kelleher of stopthepikehike.org, said on Friday that he called more than a dozen other states in the E-ZPass program to find out what they charge in upfront costs and monthly fees. Some charge no monthly fee, or modest upfront costs for the transponder. A few states, like New York, charge a $1 monthly fee. The comparison did not make him feel better.

"If you bought your transponder last month for $27, you're still paying for it," he said. "It's just a cash grab."

Kelleher considered ordering a transponder from Illinois, which assesses a $10 deposit, and no monthly fee, but realized he would not be eligible for the Fast Lane and resident discounts if he used it here.

At a city warehouse in Roxbury full of traffic lights and walk/don't walk signs, thousands of old parking meters are stacked in boxes, their still-blinking screens strewn about like a bad parking dream.

In another room, city workers are entering in the serial numbers and locations of a new generation of parking meters that don't break quite as often as the old ones.

Thomas J. Tinlin, Boston Transportation commissioner, said his team should finally finish installing 6,159 new parking meters tomorrow, completing a major piece of a long-awaited project that has serious financial implications for the city and the people who park here. Critics have been wondering what has taken so long. Tinlin said city workers needed to walk the city, log in every parking space, enter it into a computer, then register it to a new meter so problems could be better tracked.

Parking is big business in Boston. The city makes more than $10 million a year from its on-street parking meters, and a total of more than $70 million when you include all those tickets they hand out.

The old meters, in service for about 14 years, have been a problem for years because they were so easy to break, by sticking paper into the slot. Broken meters mean less cash for a city that's struggling financially. The city spent $1.3 million last year to buy 9,500 new ones.

The old meters were disabled 23 percent to 30 percent of the time, mostly through vandalism, Tinlin said. The new ones fail less than 8 percent of the time, he said.

"Where there's a will, there's unfortunately going to be a way" to break even the new meters, Tinlin said.

The familiar TD Banknorth signs will be coming off the Tobin Bridge this week. Jennifer Carlson, company spokeswoman, said the bank achieved its primary goal - name recognition - and decided not to renew after five years of ads displayed over the tollbooths.

The Massachusetts Port Authority netted $192,000 a year in the deal, after the ad agency's 30 percent cut.

Matthew Brelis, Massport spokesman, said the agency has not yet lined up a new sponsor. It accepted bids last year for a new ad agency contract, but decided to shop it out again because the guaranteed money wasn't good enough.

President Obama wants to spend billions on roads, bridges, and public transit to help jump-start the economy. But will there be enough companies and workers to take on all the work?

Maybe not in some regions of the country, if last week's Turnpike Authority meeting was an indication. The authority received only two bids for an extensive repaving and resurfacing project in Western Massachusetts, one for $9.6 million and another for just under $10 million. Turnpike engineers had estimated the project would cost $9.4 million.

"There are just not many paving contractors in the area, the Berkshires," chief engineer Helmut Ernst said when a board member asked why the interest was so low.

The board awarded the contract to Palmer Paving, which bid $9.6 million.

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