Progress on toll notices; more to be done

A lot of people are sweating over those belated and expensive notices of toll collection violations.

Now we hope there are beads of worry on the brows of those who've caused much of this angst -- the company responsible for a 13-month backlog of toll violation cases. Tollway Director Brian McPartlin told our editorial board Tuesday the agency is withholding payments to the contractor for failing to send out those violation notices on a much more timely basis.

Actually, the tollway is responsible for this mess because it hired this company and it sure waited an awful long time before cracking down with the checkbook. But we give the tollway credit for taking this necessary step and hope it leads to a quicker and more efficient toll enforcement system.

And we're glad to hear the tollway insisting that those facing fines because of their own I-PASS account problems, such as expired credit cards, can have the slate wiped clean by calling the tollway. That's the way it should be.

At the same time, the tollway can rightfully expect people to read the terms of their I-PASS agreement and take a few minutes to update accounts when necessary, and certainly not intentionally ignore violation notices.

But neither should the tollway that is so behind in getting out violation notices put the hammer down on those who are guilty of skipping tolls. Sure, they should be punished -- it's only fair to those who do pay their way on the roads. But some of these fines can outrageously pile up into the thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars. And violators risk losing driving privileges.

They should be offered some kind of payment plan. The tollway said it doesn't have the staffing to manage a payment plan. Perhaps it can do so in coordination with the Illinois Department of Revenue, which is experienced in such matters. Offering a way to pay fines over time would be showing reasonableness that would put more credibility in the tollway's claim of having a fair violation collection system, and might even help improve the tollway's enduring poor reputation among the public.

Don't interpret this as pity for flagrant violators. Again, they shouldn't escape stiff penalties. In fact, the system is out of kilter when so much time and money is being spent going after those who are not intentionally skipping tolls when emphasis should be on nabbing the true scofflaws. The tollway can't even say with certainty to what extent violations can be attributed to those who are willfully evading tolls. It ought to get a handle on this.

A stepped up enforcement effort -- catching repeat violators in the act -- would make sense. The tollway says it is looking into ways to do this in coordination with police, a good idea.

The goal is to catch and punish the real cheaters, not act like some rogue collection agency that just creates more ill will that the tollway doesn't need.