Response to Acting Secretary Millar’s OpEd and Another 800,000 tolls can’t be billed

In response to Acting Secretary Roger Millar’s OpEd.

I’m not buying it.  There have been over a million errors reported in the press (see the collection of articles here.) including the latest one yesterday where over 800,000 tolls can’t be billed.  That is far more than the 0.3% of the 37 million tolls this year as Secretary Millar claims.

This doesn’t include the errors that people have had with the system not reading the transponders, etc.  I personally have had 3 and I know another person who has had 10 so far.

Second, after 6 years of tolling, we’re still having grossly incompetent errors.  The fact that the FlexPasses don’t work on hundreds of models of vehicles; the fact that passes have chronic problems on motorcycles, when motorcycles shouldn’t need a pass at all; the project management around the implementation of the #405ETL was a circus.  He states WSDOT’s goal is to treat every call like it’s coming from a family member.  This is off track.  Your goal should be to never give them a reason to call.  Your goal should not be to treat citizens like your customers, but like your boss, which is what we are.