uFlorida’s New Toll Road Express Lanes Mean Drivers Who Use Them Will Be Paying Twicer

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  (DonkeyHotey)

  How do you feel about paying tolls? They’re probably not your favorite thing, but if you want to drive on certain roads, they’re a necessity. Drivers in Florida who want to use new express lanes on some of the state’s roads will now be facing a unique situation — double-tolling, the first instance of such a thing in the U.S.

  The new express lanes on highways that are slated to be widened — like Florida’s Turnpike and the Sawgrass Expressway — means drivers who use them will be paying twice when going through tolls: once for using the toll road, and another charge for using the express lane.

  Officials with the turnpike say customers are expecting an efficient trip, and that this offers them “time savings and a reliable trip,” reports the Orlando Sentinel.

  The express lanes charge varying fees based on how many drivers are using them, and are already in effect on parts of I-95 in the state, with new lanes under construction on I-75, the Palmetto Expressway in Miami and on a 20-mile stretch of the turnpike in Miami-Dade County that leads to the Keys.

  Lest oblivious drivers stray into the express lanes from the regular toll lanes, there will be signs displaying the additional toll amount for those faster lanes.

  There are some drivers, of course, who are displeased with the idea of double-tolling, complaining the express lanes are a form of “double taxation” and are unsafe. One critic said the new lanes make the regular lanes and the left lane emergency shoulder more narrow, and that people won’t understand the system.

  “Most people equate higher prices with faster-better so they get into the express lanes, but [the transportation department] increases prices in an effort to try and keep people out of the lanes,” he told the Sentinel.

  Turnpike, Sawgrass to have tolls on top of regular tolls [Orlando Sentinel]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist