EDITORIAL: I-PASS vs. I-Zoom

April 23, 2007

Chicago Tribune

First they drubbed us in the Super Bowl. Now they're snubbing us at the tollbooth. Indianans seem intent on picking a border fight with Illinoisans. Let's make 'em pay.

When the Indiana Toll Road begins electronic tolling in June, fares will jump 72 percent for those who pay with cash. Cars with the I-Zoom transponder -- that's Indiana's version of I-PASS -- will get a 40 percent discount. Illinois drivers with I-PASS transponders can breeze through the I-Zoom lanes without stopping, but their I-PASS accounts will get hit for the full fare.

That's not how it works on the friendly side of the state line. Drivers who pay tolls electronically get a 50 percent discount on the Illinois Tollway, whether they're using an I-PASS or another transponder issued by members of the 11-state E-ZPass network. Some 90,000 Indiana residents have invested in I-PASS transponders to save money when they drive in Illinois. Of course, we had every intention of continuing that discount now that the Hoosiers are getting their own transponders. But now we're not so sure.

In a letter to the Indiana Toll Road's new private operators, Illinois Tollway chief Brian McPartlin threatened to make I-Zoomers pay full tolls in Illinois unless Indiana extends its discount to I-PASS users.

Indiana says it didn't set out to be un-neighborly. Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan to lease the Indiana Toll Road to the same foreign consortium that operates the Chicago Skyway ran into such vehement opposition that it almost died in the legislature. In a last-minute compromise, lawmakers agreed to give I-Zoom users a 40 percent discount through 2016. But the lease deal had already been struck with Cintra-Macquarie, so the state is on the hook for the difference. Over 10 years, Indiana expects to pay the consortium $278 million to subsidize I-Zoom drivers. The possibility of subsidizing drivers who use other states' transponders didn't come up.

Even now, some Hoosiers wonder what the fuss is about. Beginning June 1, a full-fare drive across the entire length of the Indiana Toll Road will cost only $8, up from $4.65. The Indiana leg of your annual Pennsylvania road trip vacation will cost a mere $3.35 more each way. So no, it's not a threat to the college fund if you think of the Indiana Toll Road as 157 miles of asphalt on the way to someplace else. Indiana: Gateway to Ohio.

Those who drive back and forth across the state line with some regularity, though, are in for some aggravation.

We can stick with our I-PASS transponders and pay full fare in Indiana. We can equip our cars with both transponders in an attempt to qualify for both discounts, but that will probably cause the electronic system to charge us twice. We can throw away our perfectly good I-PASS transponders and get I-Zooms instead, because at least for now, I-Zooms will work on both sides of the border. Or we can retaliate.

Illinois "will have to give careful consideration to making I-Zoom holders ineligible for the electronic tolling discount for travel on the Illinois Tollway," McPartlin wrote. Why stop there? Let's fight the only-for-Hoosiers Indiana discount with the only-for-Hoosiers Illinois surcharge: I-Zoom users pay double.