Tollway nightmares

Halloween’s long over and Christmas is just weeks away. Still, readers of last week’s column inundated us with their own horror stories about passing through tollway booths in and out of Metro Manila.

There’s no point in identifying anymore the tollway operators involved because the complaints we’ve gotten corresponded to all those using e-payment cards and radio frequency ID chips.

Technology is supposed to make people’s lives easier, not harder, and the government may be given the benefit of the doubt when it mandated tollway operators to deploy cashless toll payment systems.

In theory, at least, the use of loadable, scanner-readable cards and RFID strips should make it a breeze to pass through tollways. The scanners would automatically read the card or chip, debit the corresponding toll fee, and then lift the boom so the vehicle can pass through.

I bet time-and-motion studies were cited in the adoption of cashless toll-payment systems that trumped the use of people at the booths, taking and handing back cash in toll and change.

Many people who manned those booths lost their jobs, rendered redundant by the machines.

However, the notion that all tollways can go purely cashless was immediately shot down when all sorts of problems cropped up during the rollout of the RFID and e-card payment systems.

And so, for every array of cashless booths, there’d be one or two devoted to cash payments, and woe unto those motorists who ventured into the cashless booths without RFID or e-cards or sufficient loads.

For a while, drivers without the RFID or e-payment cards were ticketed by tollway “police” for traffic obstruction at the cashless lanes.

Birth pains, the proponents of pure cashless toll payments said then, but exasperated motorists are now thinking that the cashless toll payment systems — at least as implemented in Metro Manila and nearby environs — may already be considered stillborn.

Many countries have cashless toll systems that have been running well for years and so the problems at the tollways may already correspond to faulty implementations.

The tollway operators, since their service is imbued with public interest, should already confront their cashless payment service providers for the flak they are getting from motorists.

They should do so even before this becomes a matter for the Toll Regulatory Board or Congress, exercising its oversight function, to address.

Presently, instead of easing the flow of vehicles, the faulty scanners at the lanes have consistently resulted in long vehicle lines waiting to pass through the barriers.

Many motorists, like a Grab driver we recently talked with, complained of being charged P1,560 for passing through a toll lane whose boom was left up because the scanner was malfunctioning.

Imagine being penalized over the fault of the tollway operators or their cashless service providers. In many instances, the tollway “police” had been called on complaining motorists who were threatened with being ticketed.

If these supposed toll “police” are even deputized by the Land Transportation Office, they should never be used to intimidate motorists like those contesting being told they have insufficient balance when they actually have thousands of pesos in their cards or RFID chips as loads.

One Grab driver was threatened down south by those so-called policemen when he refused to be charged the whole length of the tollway for an entry and exit that covered just a few kilometers away.

The driver was asking why he was being ticketed when he did not commit any in fraction. He was told by the quasi“cops” that he traveled the expressway end to end and they sounded like they knew better than the actual driver.

The poor driver challenged them to review the closed-circuit TV cameras to settle once and for all where he entered the expressway, but they would have none of his protestations.

It was then that the passenger flared up and berated the toll policemen while showing them his Waze app, detailing where he was picked up and where they actually entered the expressway.

The cashless payment system providers of tollway operators should shape up or ship out, and stop using the coercive presence of tollway cops against aggravated motorists.

If they cannot fix their systems, they should bring back all of those toll booth personnel they fired so they can immediately accept cash payments or manually input payments on cashless booths whose scanners are malfunctioning.

“Many countries have cashless toll systems that have been running well for years and so the problems at the tollways may already correspond to faulty implementations.

“Instead

of easing the flow of vehicles, the faulty scanners at the lanes have consistently resulted in long vehicle lines waiting to pass through the barriers.