No Need to Change Plans at San Joaquin Hills Onramp

Dear Street Smart:

It could happen to you, if it hasn’t already. You drive up an onramp to the new San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, passing a sign that warns you will need exact change, but not how much. You arrive at the toll plaza and find that you don’t have enough coins.

Do you: A) turn your car around and drive the wrong way back down the ramp, B) throw a dollar bill or a check into the toll collection basket, or C) get out of your car and ask other drivers for change?

Drivers have done all three in the two months since the road opened, according to Michele Sperl-Miller, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies.

The agencies are looking into correcting the glitch with the signs, she said. In the meantime, they are urging people who haven’t memorized the tolls and who don’t have the exact change to ignore the buzzing alarm and drive past the red stop light without paying.

Throwing checks or dollar bills into the basket will clog its mechanism, and the other alternatives could kill you, she said. “We’d rather have you violate the toll road than be unsafe,” she said.

A camera automatically photographs the license plates of drivers who don’t pay. About a week later, they receive letters giving them 15 days to pay the toll. If they don’t, a $10 administrative fee is be added to the amount due. And if they still haven’t paid 15 days after that, they are assessed a $76 fine.

Those who ignore that fine can’t renew their car registrations.

So, for toll-road neophytes, here’s what the signs don’t tell you.

Fares on the 15-mile road from San Juan Capistrano to Newport Beach range from 25 cents to $2, depending on where you enter or exit. They range from 25 to 75 cents between unstaffed toll booths equipped with baskets to receive coins. They do not take pennies.

Drivers with transponders, tiny electronic devices attached to their windshields, can drive through lanes marked FasTrak, where overhanging sensors automatically debit their accounts. And two points, El Toro Road and the Mainline Toll Plaza, are staffed around the clock with human toll collectors who make change.

About 1% of the toll-road drivers have found themselves at unstaffed booths with insufficient change, Sperl-Miller said.

Her advice: Always keep $2 worth of change in your car.

“That way you’ll be covered at both ends,” she said. “Be prepared, even if you don’t think you’ll be using the corridor. Don’t keep any pennies, though.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County Edition, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to (714) 966-7711 or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.