My anti-socialism rant.

I've fallen victim to this new government shakedown trap twice now - last year in Louisville and now in Chicago.    Its called TOLL ROADS with NO TOLL BOOTHS

Here's what happens:   You drive down the tollway and you pay the tolls in the aloted booths along the way.  But suddenly they stop having booths.    And thats fine if you have the automated toll paying system attached to your car....but for out-of-staters who dont have that system - you get nailed for not paying the toll.  There's no way for you to pay it.   You now have 7 days to go scour the internet to find their website (which they dont make transparent) and pay any toll-boothless tolls you may have driven through.   After that its a $10 fine per violation.     

I just got a bill for $40 for visiting my sister in Chicago.    Apparently I drive through two toll-boothless tolls on the way there and on the way back.    

That be some f@cked up shit right there.

What do you do if you are not computer literate? 

Colorado has a system the snaps a photo of your license plate. In a few weeks you get the toll bill, you can either pay online or mail it. No penalties if you don’t have the “CDOT” sticker. Pretty painless

It could be worse, you could be living in Illinois and pay the crazy property taxes:

https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/worst-states-for-property-taxes.html/

I've been nailed on two occasions, each time with several fines.  While I live in Indiana, I travel to the Chicago area regularly and have owned a transponder for over a decade.  I flew from Minneapolis to Chicago a couple of years back, and rented a car.  Like PJ, I couldn't pull into a booth to pay.  IDOT makes it nearly impossible to figure out how to pay the bill prior to being fined.  Another time I was driving though town with a moving van, and I also got screwed on this occasion.

I'm convinced that IDOT is using this as a money maker.  Otherwise, they would offer a transparant method to pay the bill prior to being fined.

Lol, welcome to the people's republic of Illinois.  I absolutely love hearing a leftist like PJ whine about life in a democrat environment!  Democrats here can't even run the toll authority, let alone a state, or heaven forbid, the federal government.

Indiana and Kentucky are both Republican-runied states. The complaint was not confined to Illinois. Here in Indiana, we have privatized a lot of roads and greedy foreign corporations continually jack up the prices and employ gotcha fine systems like these.