Series seeks productive actions, not simply another shot at tollway
It's easy to disdain the Illinois tollway.
Born of the same lie that frequently justifies unpopular government projects -- think local taxes: "Don't worry; this issue doesn't raise your taxes because it replaces an expiring bond," or casino gambling: "Don't worry; they'll just be quaint relics of history allowed only on rivers in towns that need an economic boost" -- the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority has become a permanent fixture of suburban life, operated by political appointees, symbolized by a palatial suburban headquarters and tarnished at various times over its 50-year lifespan with stories of greed and corruption.
We live with it because we must, and grumble.
At times, though, grumbling can lead to action and, with luck and persistence, perhaps our series this week on the tollway's bullying approach to punishing real and supposed scofflaws can lead to practices that are more reasonable and fair.
Projects and politics writer Joseph Ryan conceived the series when, while covering the tollway as the paper's transportation writer, he observed its management of the Open Road Toll system and began to hear stories from people affected by its monitoring practices. The system, depending on the precision and speed of a highly complex computer network, clearly is open to abuse and demands close oversight. But the stories Ryan was hearing suggested the authorities were using that fact to justify a punishment process that can be excessive and prone to error.
Ryan's investigation did not aim to suggest that people who stubbornly refuse to pay tolls -- thus cheating the system and the rest of us who do pay up -- should be tolerated or go unpunished. But it did show how the tollway uses a system of hired administrative judges and rapidly ascending fines to intimidate and overpower even accidental offenders, despite problems of its own in monitoring and identifying scofflaws.
More practically, it showed how you can minimize your chances of getting caught in the system's callous and unyielding net. Indeed, if all you take away from the series is one more reason to condemn the tollway authority, you missed an important point. In the long term, the series has value if it leads the tollway to manage its practices more fairly, but its most immediate benefit can be the practices it emphasized you can adopt now -- monitoring your I-PASS payments on your credit card, for instance, and managing your account through the I-PASS Web site. It was journalism intended not just to draw your attention to potential problems in a government system but also to help you avoid becoming a victim of those problems.
Major expressways are important to the growth and development of the suburbs. Of course, we can't expect the construction and maintenance of highways to be free of charge or the abuse of them to be free from consequences. But at the same time, the system that manages it all demands special scrutiny. The tollway authority is not elected, after all, and it operates as a virtual monopoly. When it comes to simple responsiveness to its customers, what incentive does the agency have other than public examination?
Ryan's reports this week certainly add cause for a willing public to grumble at the insensitivity and aloofness of the tollway. But we want them to have a more productive effect than that. We hope they boost the agency's incentive to be responsive to the hundreds of thousands of commuters who use the tollway every day.