SomePass

Road Raunch

The days of romance with the american road are long gone thanks in no small part to greed at the hands of officials quick to embrace Red Light Cameras and any scheme that goes ching-ching in their grubby little minds. The motoring public should take note of alarm and caution with developing issues. Wake up and smell the racket.

While the number of tickets is issued is plunging, the costs are soaring.

City commissioners are closely monitoring the situation because their budget depended on bringing in $3 milllion from red-light camera tickets. Now they think they may collect as little as just $500,000 in light of the higher costs and fewer-than-expected tickets.

Pembroke Pines has similar cost concerns. That city has received $76,294 from citations, but the red-light camera program has cost $83,337. Legal fees encompassed $33,189 of that, with the rest going to ATS to manage the cameras.

I will wager $158. the light runner in this vid was on the phone.

Technology is inherently neither good nor bad. Automation today is a sacred cow (cash cow that is) for municipalities and MDX strapped for cash. Taking the human out of the equation not only eliminates jobs but more so de-humanizes reasonable enforcement and civility. When technology is used by special interest to undermine our quality of life, things get ugly. In an authoritarian grab for money, officials hide behind the pretext of safety and suppress the simple truth that the motoring public is a silent tax base ripe for extortion.

Buk 50

..."Drivers headed to the Keys over the Presidents Day weekend on Florida's Turnpike will encounter the newest change in toll collecting: No cash, please.

At 12:01 a.m. Feb. 19, crews will begin to close all the old-fashioned toll booths on the 47-mile Homestead Extension, which runs from Miramar to Florida City. The transition is expected to take about 48 hours.

You'll pay either with SunPass, or you'll be billed later, based on photographs of your license plate as you drive under overhead gantries. Monthly bills will include a $2.50 service charge.

It's part of a multi-year plan to convert the entire turnpike system to a cashless toll road."...

Some Pass, Others Don't

My problem with the sunpass is not its popularity, that's understandable. My concern is the highjacking of motorists dollars for the benefit of a few. The carrot that gets you on board is personal convenience, the joy of uninterrupted driving. But the greedy underbelly is a system that holds millions of our dollars in a collective minimum balance that is invested for profit that is not shared with those who put up the capital. Between public debt and private profit is the secret mantra of the self serving.

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