Open-road tolling begins in Belvidere

Heath Hixson, ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR, BELVIDERE — Traffic at the Belvidere Toll Plaza on Interstate 90 was backed up about a mile Wednesday morning to the Belvidere Oasis as travelers waited to pay their tolls.

The sight was nothing new, although it should now become less common.That’s because at that moment, inside the oasis, Illinois State Toll Highway Authority officials were announcing the start of open-road tolling in the Rock River Valley.

They said drivers would soon have a new tollway experience and promised that the implementation of the system would result in faster drive times and less congestion at toll plazas.

“With open-road tolling, people can spend less time in traffic and spend more time on what they want,” Brian McPartlin, acting executive director of the tollway authority, said at a news conference with the slow-moving traffic as a backdrop.

Open-road tolling allows barrier-free travel for users of I-PASS. Motorists’ electronic accounts are charged as they pass beneath transponders at the toll plaza. Cash users are diverted into separate lanes to allow for the free flow of I-PASS traffic, which tollway officials say makes up 75 percent of the system’s users.

A half-hour later, media and other interested parties moved to the toll plaza parking lot and watched as McPartlin’s pronouncement materialized. About 10:30 a.m., the first two open-road tolling lanes opened.Among the first vehicles on the momentarily empty tollway was a Chrysler Sebring carrying Belvidere Mayor Fred Brereton and Carl Towns, a Rockford-based member of the tollway board of directors. Behind them were a newly manufactured Dodge Caliber and a Jeep Compass, provided by DaimlerChrysler’s Belvidere plant.

Once the ceremony was over, a mass of vehicles stuck in traffic that had been waiting to use the nearby older toll booths were let loose. The I-PASS users zoomed by at highway speeds. Cash users merged to the right to squeeze into two of three cash lanes that were opened.

Within 30 minutes, the traffic jam had dissipated. One could drive through the cash lanes unimpeded after the third lane opened.“(People) wanted to get where they wanted to go without long lines, and the only way to do that is with open-road tolling,” Towns said.

Aside from open-road tolling, the new lanes will end construction that has disrupted westbound traffic at the Belvidere plaza. The plaza’s older tollbooths will be removed by the end of the year and eastbound lanes will be shifted back from the shoulder.

The Belvidere plaza is the 13th of 20 mainline plazas in the authority’s interstate system to be converted to open-road tolling. The Marengo Toll Plaza will open Friday with open-road tolling.

The South Beloit Toll Plaza will be completed this fall, officials said.Reconstruction of the toll plazas are part of the tollway authority’s $5.3 billion plan to overhaul nearly all of its 274-mile interstate system in Northern Illinois. The plazas’ portion of the project is expected to cost $327.3 million and is on time and on budget, tollway officials said.Steve Nailor, chairman of the Rockford-Winnebago Better Roads Association, said the open-road tolling would help drivers “save time and money” and reduce bottlenecks in the system.