Wear: MoPac toll rate a mystery for some

Well, this is awkward. The foundational theory behind the varying tolls on the North MoPac Boulevard express lanes — both the northbound section that opened Oct. 15 and the several additional miles to follow next year — is that each driver will get to decide if the going toll price is worth it.

A half-mile or so before each of the four entrances, an electronic sign will show the current toll rate, and motorists can then choose to take the toll lane, or not, based on that fifigure and the urgency of reaching their destinations — except for those unfortunate folks who enter MoPac from the Far West Boulevard ramp and want to take the southbound express lane. They get to guess. Reader Eileen Saling, a retired banker who lives in the North Cat Mountain area and uses Far West to get to MoPac, alerted me to this aberration. She called last week to point out that the electronic sign showing the toll — which is up already, but not functioning because the southbound toll lane won’t be ready for at least six months on the more-thana-year-tardy project — is affiffixed to the north side of the Far West overpass.

Which means it is upstream of the entrance ramp from Far West. There is no toll rate sign on that ramp, however, and — as I found out later — no plans to install one. Drivers from the Far West onramp, depending on the traffiffic conditions and their chutzpah quotient, could move over three lanes in the 2,000 or so feet available and enter the toll lane. I know because I’ve now made that weave three times in diffffffffffffering traffiffic conditions, and Statesman columnist Ken Herman, whose video accompanies this column online, did it twice during the morning rush hour.

Something the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority would really rather no one do.

Back to Saling, who doesn’t drive MoPac often (her husband does for his downtown job), but apparently is in charge of paying the family toll bill: So this bit of tollway design was concerning to her. She said it appeared that people entering MoPac at Far West, and then taking the toll lane, would have no idea what the toll rate would be.

No way, I thought. So I called the mobility authority.

And offifficials said that Saling has it right.

“No sign is planned for the Far West entrance ramp,” authority spokeswoman Dee Ann Heath said. The rule of thumb, she said, is that a driver needs 1,000 feet for each yes,