Just How Fucked Up is TxTag?

How does "a wicked pyramid scheme folded inside of a Nigerian banking scam email" work for you?

LMFAO

We live in Texas, so it’s a truly target-rich environment for jacked up shit. Marginal health care, horrific weather, some of the most regressive and cynical politics in the country, and treating the environment as a shallow afterthought—there’s a lot here to revile.

But buried deep inside this poop sandwich is something truly wicked: the Texas toll road system. Whether it’s corruption, incompetence, or (most likely) some share of both, the toll part of toll roads is simply broken.

Cards on the table

And I’m not even going to dive into: (1) the rights/wrongs of charging people to use publicly funded roads, which is utter bullshit to begin with; (2) the cost, which has risen faster than the turgid inflation we’ve seen over the last two years; or (3) the fact that the brain-dead design of some of these highways can lead to massive delays for small incidents. My dive is laser-focusing on the hellish tales associated with the tool used to collect these tolls: The TxTag.

They’re paying $12 to watch several free lanes roll past, hilari—uh, I mean, horrible

For those of y’all who still haven’t left your house since COVID, TxTag is the sticker that you need to, hypothetically, be able to receive reduced charges on certain toll roads in Texas, including all of them in Austin, including SH 130, SH 45, and my own vaunted Express Lane aka the place you pay $12.30 to get home 47 seconds earlier. In theory, this is only kind of fucked: paying money to go a little faster than the commoners on free roads and anyone else who doesn’t have the sticker using the same toll lane. Annoying but y’all know what you’re getting into. Again, hypothetically.

Two birds, one stone

But, in practice, it’s a broken down bus on the side of the road due to preposterous and often incredibly tardy overcharges for people who have purchased the tag, even in situations when the tolls have been paid. Making it worse is a Draconian schedule of “late fees” that make HOAs seem like a nurturing grandmother. Add a Customer Service Center reminiscent of Austin’s COVID Vaccine scheduling webpage in early 2021, and y’all have a meaty shit sandwich that seems to be squeezing Texas drivers with impunity.

That 1.7 out of 5 rating seems suspiciously high

Back in 2021, Texas fired the then administrator of TxTag after years of similar problems with overcharges and general incompetence, but that clearly has not fixed the problem, which has seemingly only gotten worse in the last two years while cynically keeping up the party line that the problems are “unusual” or “isolated” in nature, which is as insulting as seeing a $500 toll bill for a road you’ve driven on 10 times.

From the mouth of God to your eyes

These issues have hardly gone unnoticed by the media, and KXAN in Austin has done a particularly admirable deep dive into identifying the issues, then drilled down to figure out just what the fuck is happening, while holding the State’s feet to the fire when they tried to ignore requests for information. Hats off to that high-quality slice of local journalism. And, shocker, the answer to all of the questions appears to largely lead back to breathtaking institutional incompetence spanning years and hundreds of complaints. But Texas still focuses thousands of times more energy on chasing culture war ghosts by trying to ban books in schools and stopping drag shows. It’s where we are.

Photo Credit: KXAN

So we’ve identified the problem: Late and preposterously inaccurate billing for TxTag that has lasted almost a decade at this point. The solution is far trickier, in part because so many of y’all have gotten used to taking these roads (or, in MoPac’s case, lanes) that it will be hard to turn back the clock on what has become commonplace.

“Tough news for the commoners, lol” -Porsche driver

Accordingly, it seems one of two things needs to happen to make this right: Either the problem gets so bad that the State of Texas finally fixes it. (Excuse me if I’m not betting on that.) Or things fall apart to the extent that y’all stop using toll lanes. This seems more likely.

At what point do you grow weary enough of getting triple-billed with bogus late fees that would have made the 2002 Blockbuster CEO blush to actually say “fuck it, I’ll take the free lanes today and get home three minutes later.”

It’s anecdotal, yes, but with the exception of the few times of day when the free lanes on MoPac are cramped but not truly horrible and the toll lanes are definitely flowing faster, there aren’t many moments where shelling out $$$ to CTRMA gets you where you want to go more than a few minutes faster. Maybe it’s thinking it’s helping that matters. Psychology is important. But really, the MoPac toll lanes are not a sound return on your investment. Throw in some double (or triple or quadruple) billing and there’s a lot of incentive not to use them. So don’t. It’ll feel good.

UPDATE: Some have suggested that an NTTA tag not only works in Austin but is reliable. Check it out here.