E470 scofflaws: Trouble tolls for thee

AURORA | A few motorists who zip along E-470 without paying their tolls are in for an unpleasant surprise this fall.

Toll road officials announced last week that they have an agreement with the Colorado Department of revenue to bar the worst toll violators from renewing their vehicle registration until they settle their debts.

“We have this small but growing customer group that hasn’t paid their tolls, hasn’t responded to bills,” said David Kristick, E-470’s deputy director.

The crackdown is set to start in October and will only target motorists who E-470 and the Interstate 25 Express Lanes Authority view as the worst offenders. Each one of those 2,000 violators owes at least $200 in tolls and fees. In total, the group owes more than $1 million.

Under the toll road’s rules, it takes multiple toll violations and about a year of failing to pay for a motorist to rack up $200 in debts to E-470.

Kristick said E-470 has had the authority to report toll violators to the Colorado Department of Revenue since a law in 2005 granted it to them, but they have opted not to use it until now. Toll road officials decided this year that it wasn’t fair to let the problem continue without trying something new.

“We have hundreds of thousands of customers that pay and use it right,” Kristick said. “To accommodate this small group like we have over time isn’t the fair thing to do to those faithful, paying customers.”

The violators make up a very small percentage of the motorists who frequent the road, Kristick said, and officials don’t have any plans to go after less-severe violators. Across the board, more than 96 percent of tolls are paid, he said.

E-470 Executive Director John McCuskey said the crackdown is “the fair thing to do” considering that 96 percent who do pay.

“The non-paying customers in this first grouping are not casual or occasional users of the road and they have either ignored or disregarded their responsibility to pay their bills,” he said. “It amounts to theft of service.”

E-470, which is partially paid for through voter-approved registration fees in Douglas, Arapahoe and Adams counties, has tried several different approaches to get toll violators to pay their fair share over the years, including taking violators to civil court. Initially those cases were heard in Arapahoe County Court, but Kristick said they were moved to an administrative docket in Aurora Municipal Court in 2005 after they started to fill the dockets in county court.

Several years ago, the toll road worked with the Colorado State Patrol to hassle the worst violators. While troopers couldn’t issue a citation to those motorists, they did stake out particular stretches of E-470 the violators frequented and pulled them over, issuing warnings about the need to pay their tolls.

But Kristick said officials stopped that practice several years ago because it wasn’t a good use of the patrol’s time.

Still, Kristick said E-470 officials feel like they give users ample opportunity to pay up, and ample notice when they don’t. Motorists are given three months before their bill is shipped to a collections agency, and the collectors wait another four months before the case moves toward court.

Kristick said the worst violators have simply ignored their bills, often times while still frequenting the toll road.

The worst violator is a business with several vehicles that owes more than $8,000, he said. Kristick said he is hopeful that business realizes they have a debt and opts to pay it.

“It could just be an oversight,” he said.

Under state law, E-470 isn’t allowed to release the names of customers who haven’t paid.

E-470 isn’t the only toll road to try to use the vehicle registration process to compel motorists to
pay up.

Neil Gray, director of governmental affairs for the International Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Association, said going after a violator’s registration has long been an effective tool for toll roads.

“The license plate hold is actually a very effective thing,” he said.

The industry doesn’t track the rates that motorists pay their tolls, but Gray said most view the costs as something similar to how a retailer views shoplifting. It makes up a small percentage of their overall income, but it’s still something they want to stop as much as possible.

The issue for toll roads looking to collect debts is always a matter of balancing the cost of collecting a debt with the amount of that debt. If an out-of-state motorist owes just a small toll, it likely doesn’t make sense for a toll road to waste resources going after them, he said.

But some toll roads are partnering with other states so they can crack down not only on violators close to home, but also violators from out of state.

Right now, toll roads in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have agreements that allow them to hold up a toll violator’s registration in other states.

“That has been happening and it’s a very interesting government function,” Gray said.