She said the Indiana Toll Road Concession Company "could decide to pay these customer service expenses as a cost of doing business and simply take less profit. "Most toll agencies around the nation, including the Illinois Tollway, absorb these customer service costs and factor them into the tolls they charge," Abrams said. The company initiated the 3-cent charge to cover the transaction fee the Illinois Tollway imposes for the costs of providing the company with services related to transponders, customer account maintenance and the customer call center, tollway officials said. The transaction fees are collected "to help offset certain costs associated with interoperability of the E-ZPass network," according to the Indiana Toll Road Concession Company, which is the private company that under long-term lease agreements operates the Indiana Toll Road for the state of Indiana and the skyway for the city of Chicago. The extra 3 cents that I-Pass customers pay on the two toll roads account for why drivers who scan their monthly I-Pass statements online may have noticed what appear to be odd charges, like $4.03 instead of $4 for driving on the skyway, and 53 cents instead of a 50-cent toll at various locations on the Indiana Toll Road. "Illinois, in effect, provides a large portion of the customer service costs" for the private company that operates the skyway and the Indiana Toll Road, Abrams said. Total customer service costs are about $2.2 million annually, the officials said. The tollway system currently has 4.6 million active transponders, officials said. Some 204,793 I-Pass transponders have been distributed to Indiana residents, according to the tollway. In 2012, I-Pass was used in 59 percent of all electronic transactions on the Indiana Toll Road and the skyway, tollway officials said. Yet I-Pass is the predominant transponder used on the Indiana Toll Road and the skyway, tollway officials said. Indiana joined the E-ZPass consortium in connection with discontinuing its own toll-collection system, called i-Zoom, in 2012. It is accepted along with I-Pass on the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway. The issue will be brought before the tollway board's Customer Service Committee in May to determine the legal avenues for potentially passing on a transaction fee to E-ZPass customers from only one state - Indiana - and how the fee would be implemented, Abrams said.Į-ZPass is the electronic toll-payment system used by Indiana and about two dozen toll agencies in the U.S.
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