By guest blogger Emily Pace

Good To Go! customers can add out of town visitors to their account so they don’t have to stop at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll booths.

It’s the time of year when family and friends start coming into town for the holidays and we wanted to remind drivers how easy it is to temporarily add out-of-towners to your existing Good To Go! account. If you’re a Good To Go! customer there are two ways to pay tolls: install a pass in your car or register a vehicle’s license plate on your account. By simply adding a vehicle’s license plate to your account, called Pay By Plate, you can pay the tolls for that vehicle when it crosses the SR 520 or Tacoma Narrows bridges. You don’t need to install a pass.

With Pay By Plate, visitors can skip the lines at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll booths. We typically see heavy traffic eastbound on SR 16 near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll plaza on Thanksgiving Day between 5 and 11 p.m.; usually after dinner wraps-up. You can also use the 24th Street on-ramp to bypass the toll booths. Drivers without a Good To Go! account can choose to Pay By Mail on the SR 520 or Tacoma Narrows bridges and we’ll mail a bill to the registered vehicle owner within 14 days.

How Pay By Plate works: log into your online account or call customer service to add a vehicle’s license plate, make and model to a Good To Go! account. When the vehicle travels across the SR 520 or Tacoma Narrows bridges, tolling equipment will take a photo of the vehicle’s license plate. The license plate is then matched to the correct Good To Go! account and the toll is deducted.

When using Pay By Plate, drivers will be charged the posted Good To Go! toll rate plus an extra 25 cent fee for each toll transaction. Why the extra 25 cents? The extra fee helps cover the costs associated with processing these transactions. While our license plate recognition software is good, it is not perfect and some of the photos require a person to review.

While there is an extra fee, Pay By Plate is a great option for out-of-towners who are visiting someone with a Good To Go! account. You can have up to six vehicles on an account at any time, with a mix of vehicles paying with a pass or using Pay By Plate. Both options provide the lowest toll rates and allow visitors to skip receiving a bill in the mail or stopping at the toll booths on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Pay By Plate only works on the SR 520 and Tacoma Narrows bridges. Solo drivers wanting to use the SR 167 HOT lanes still need a Good To Go! pass.

And remember, this is not just a special holiday offer. Pay By Plate is available year round. So whether you have family coming for Easter, friends in town for SeaFair, or you’re caravaning on a road trip, consider adding your visitor’s license plates to your Good To Go! account. You can call customer service or log into your online account to add and remove vehicles and passes as needed.

It has been an interesting week with tolling. We thought we’d take a minute to provide a little more insight and background on a few of the issues that made the rounds.

Unintentional fees
We unintentionally charged some customers additional 25-cent fees for crossing the SR 520 bridge.  A system glitch caused the toll sensors to read a Good To Go! pass and a license plate on the same vehicle as two separate transactions, which lead to an unwarranted $0.25 Pay By Plate fee, duplicate or over-axle charges. We are sincerely sorry about those charges and will be issuing credits to affected customers’ accounts.

What is an inactive fee?
There also were a few stories about the $5 inactive-account fee that we have in place. It’s exactly what it sounds like. If a Good To Go! account hasn’t had any activity on it for two years, we’ll make two attempts to reach a customer. If we can’t reach them we charge $5, close the account and issue a check for the remaining balance. Customers can close their account at any time and be issued a full refund of the remaining balance without a $5 fee. Charging the inactive account holder is the fairest way to cover the costs for this. The $5 charge includes the cost for locating the account holder, generating and mailing two statements, issuing a check for the remaining balance on the account and maintaining the inactive account for two years.

Where is my $10 for signing up early?
We’ve also heard from customers who want to know what happened to their $10 incentive. Before tolling started on SR 520, we offered customers who signed up early a $10 incentive if signed up before April 15, 2011. Now that tolling has started, they’re wondering why they haven’t seen the credit yet. It should be on your monthly statement for January, which should be arriving soon. Something else noteworthy about the incentive is that it’s only good for three months after tolling started. The credits will expire at the end of March if they’re not used up before then.

What is Pay By Plate?
We offer Pay By Plate accounts to customers who want to pay the lowest toll rate without having to buy and install passes on every vehicle listed on their account. It’s great for rarely driven cars, cars with metallic windshields, classic cars and your out-of-town visitor’s cars. You simply register the license plate and a photo is taken of the plate when crossing the SR 520 or Tacoma Narrows bridges. We charge a 25-cent fee because while the license plate recognition software is good, it’s not perfect, and some photos require us to review it and match the plate to an account. This takes time and money.

Unfortunately, with a tolling system that generates tens of thousands of transactions every single day, we will probably have a few more issues that pop up as we move forward. We’ll continue to be diligent about responding them as quickly and courteously as possible. And, if you notice something that’s not right, please don’t hesitate to contact our customer service center right away. We want to work with you to get it resolved. Thank you for your patience thus far.