A peach pass for the Atlanta area, mostly used for express lanes when traffic is high, and a sun pass, needed to drive almost anywhere in Florida. It's much easier to get them, and they just charge it to your credit card. If you drive around the Chicago area, you really need a transponder. It's almost impossible to get all the way over into the right lane, pay the toll, then get back onto the road, and you have to do that every few miles. My wish is that there could be a universal transponder that all the states can read.

We travel to and around Chicago several times a year and I wouldn't be without it.

road, which is basically a bypass around the city, costs a lot more (about $8, I think). An EZ pass gets you through all of the toll booths.

You should have seen what it was like before transponders! I used to do it in a semi all the time and it was truly time consuming. But there were a good six to eight lanes for everything but trucks, we were reduced to one or two lanes to the right.

I haven't been to Chicago in well over a decade so I don't know if there have been major changes to the expressways there but I remember it back in the 70s through the 90s and it was just part of the pain of needing to drive in or through Chicago.

Other states, like Ohio and PA had the pay points on the exits so you paid when you got off, having been issued a time/location ticket upon entry. And you wouldn't believe what they charge semis to use those roads, like the PA Turnpike, back in the day cost some $30 - $60 to get across, can't imagine how they deal with that now.

Toll roads were quite a gnarly network of pain-in-the-neck stop and pay points all over the NE as I recall.

What I didn't know was that WV tolls don't take credit cards, they're cash or transponder only. Extremely inconvenient to people out of state who are unaware of that. Toll roads up in Indiana take credit cards. Can't believe how backwards it was.

Each about 2.50 for car/suv.
Ohio turnpike runs east to west and cost about 10 bucks from east to west gate to gate.

You can get transponders that are connected to a credit card and you don't have to stop

I am an Engineer and have worked in and around the transportation industry for 30 years. It drives me crazy. My co-workers used to antagonize me just to see me get riled up and rant about it.

My contention has always been that as Engineers we are asked to build these beautiful wide open roads that are safe at high speeds then a politician throws a barrier in the middle of it to collect a fucking quarter (ok its an old rant). It's bad for traffic, its bad for safety, its bad for the environment, it takes more space, its ugly and it used to be terribly inefficient to pay people to stand there in the fumes to collect that quarter. It has gotten a lot better with electronic tolling but it is simply a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist. If you don't happen to have the right etoll transponder, you might just be out of luck. Just a few weeks ago, I was driving around outside of Chicago in a rental car and Apple Maps took me on a toll road (whole different rant). There I was digging around in my pocket for money while I approached a barrier with cars weaving all around me. It is a safety nightmare and contrary to every design intention that we normally uphold.

Funny you should mention Jacksonville. I grew up there and it was definitely a toll town. Back in the day, there were even two tolls on I-95 through there. I went to college at Miami and all of my northern friends would give me an earful because they drove down 1500 miles and Jacksonville was the only place that nicked them for tolls. When I was growing up, the powers that be always said the tolls were a necessary evil and they could not go away. Lo and behold, they put it on the ballot and poof, they were gone in lieu of a sales tax.

Infrastructure funding in this country is broken. In my old rant, I simply advocated for increased gas taxes to pay for all roads. But funding is getting even more complicated because the future of the gas tax is incompatible with electric vehicles.

It simply makes no sense that some roads are paid for and others are tolls. Hell, in some parts of the South Florida the free road (I-95) and the toll road (turnpike) are side by side in the same corridor. The politicians and planners will say it is a way to get things built that otherwise lack funding. It really boils down to political will. If it is worth doing, find a way to pay for it. The cowards way is to slap a toll on it.

Basically an extortion scheme which further divides the haves and have-nots

That is rampant in South Florida right now. I-95 around my house is a mess right now in a massive conversion that is simply terrible.

There are some places where it made some sense because there was a great deal of bypass traffic that could be routed around the traffic that goes exit to exit. But they are expanding it to areas where it makes almost no sense because there is a very small percentage of the traffic that is long distance enough to use the bypasses. The first phase of it in Broward county was so badly implemented that the traffic was worse after the fact than before. They had to retroactively change the merge patterns because there were so many accidents.

It seems to me this is an extension of the same funding problems. These projects are getting built because those the special funding sources that are available. It is the tail wagging the dog. In some cases, it even worse because they are funded by private vendors who then get to keep the toll money. Again, a very shortsighted and cowardly way to pay for infrastructure.

From Petersburg, VA to Richmond. It still does in Maryland, used to in Connecticut (there is talk of reinstalling them) one booth if memory serves in Rhode Island, and then was free all the way to Maine.

The segment of 95 and the turnpike that run parallel you mention is actually the newest segment of I-95. For years if you wanted to go from Miami to ...say...Cocoa or Daytona, you drove I-95 to Palm Beach Gardens where 95 ended, got on the turnpike and took it to Fort Pierce, where you could pick up 95 again. The section from Ft. Pierce down to PB Gardens (Called the "Treasure Coast Link" )was completed in 1987

I was in college from 84-88 so I made that bypass from I-95 a bunch. On holiday weekends it could be a super long backup.

That stretch in particular just reinforced by peeves about how arbitrary tolls versus non-toll could be.

It's not cheap....something like $15 each way from South Florida to its end in Wildwood, just south of Ocala.

But it's the only direct expressway link from South Florida to Orlando and points north and west, so there's almost no avoiding it unless you want to double your travel time.

Thankfully, with Sunpass, going through the tolls isn't that bad. And down in Miami and Broward they don't even have booths--you either have Sunpass or they scan your plate and mail you the bill.

But as I frequently go up to the Gainesville area, it is an added travel expense.

Missouri doesn't have them. There may be toll bridges some place in the state but no toll roads. I took a long road trip years ago, and while on it, I felt like all i did was throw money at New York and Massachusetts. I also remember going on trips across Oklahoma with family, and it seemed we stopped all the time to pay bills. I'd personally just rather pay taxes.

when I drove my 1959 Volvo 544 from California to my next USAF assignment at Ft. George Meade in Maryland. Fortunately, I did have the cash to pay the toll on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I had no idea there was such a toll road until I encountered it. Very shocking to me. I had never seen a toll road before.

That would probably put an end to tolls after about a month

As for the merits of toll roads, why should they be free? You pay fees for every other means of transportation.

It just means paid for collectively through a different means. In this case, generally the gas tax.

The people on the toll roads are still paying the gas tax. So the toll is actually a surcharge over and above the baseline cost of using roads. It can be arbitrary to charge certain people more for what other people are getting for "free"

To drive 45 minutes and 52km - my apartment in Aix to Cassis on the Med, costs 4,60€ one way. If I want to go to Nice 178k away, it's going to cost 24€ minimum, one way. Diesel is presently costing 1,45€/liter though my car gets around 24k per liter.
Of course, the roads are incredibly well maintained and policed. Top speed is 130k/h when the sun is shining, 110 when it's raining.
France privatised the toll roads several years ago.

LOL.....

The cash toll for an 18 wheeler to cross the George Washington Bridge, from New Jersey into New York is $125!

http://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/tolls.html

I regularly drive from Toledo (Perrysburg entrance) on I-80 to Warrendale, PA and it's around $60 for a tractor trailer. (yes, I know 80 doesn't go all the way. The road becomes I-76 near Youngstown and turns into the PA Turnpike at the state line)

It seems to me that toll roads are more prevalent in the Northeast than anywhere else in the country. The advent of Express lanes that charge a toll is relatively recent, but they are popping up everywhere, as was mentioned previously.

You would think that a toll road would be better maintained than other non-toll freeways, but that isn't always the case.

FWIW, if you have a Garmin GPS, most have a feature in the "Tools" menu that you can set to avoid toll roads.

The Garden State Parkway and the NJ Turnpike, not to mention bridge and tunnel tolls into New York, can make a rich person go broke. Here in PA we've got the oldest toll road in the country - the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It's equally hated by everyone, however the Turnpike is the safest/best way to cross our state in the wintertime.