Cost
Consumers are not required to pay the cost of the transponder. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority used to charge a one-time fee to buy the transponder. They had planned to replace that charge with a $0.50 monthly fee, but both fees were eliminated due to criticism on Massachusetts Turnpike Easter Sunday congestion in 2009.
The legality and constitutionality of offering discounts to holders of transponders issued by Massachusetts as opposed to transponders issued by other states has been upheld twice at the federal appellate level, in 2003 by the First Circuit in a case arising out of Massachusetts and in 2010 by the Third Circuit in a case arising out of New Jersey. Significantly, both courts based their rulings on the fact that Massachusetts transponders are available on equal terms to in-state and out-of-state residents and that anyone is allowed to have a transponder from more than one state at a time, choosing which transponder to use in each toll transaction to obtain the cheaper rate. The court in the New Jersey case noted parenthetically that "...out-of-state residents who commute regularly to Boston each day might very well decide to carry only a Fast Lane transponder."
Read more about this topic: Fast Lane
Famous quotes containing the word cost:
“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“It is not enough for theory to describe and analyse, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)