A Bit of Science. Maybe.

So Fastrak seems like a good idea, and maybe it is, really.  But lemme tell you something, when I got the darned thing, the “replenish amount” (what they charged your credit card at a time) was $X, and the “replenish threshold” (the lowest amount it would get to before it would charge your credit card – with no warning, mind you) was $Y.  Okay.  So then I’m crossing the Golden Gate Bridge every day and man, does that thing add up.  $6 without a Fastrak, $5 with.  Yikes.  So I’m using it every day and then the replenish threshold goes up to like $1.5Y and the amount to like $2.5X.  (This is kind of vague, I know.)  Also, there were several phone calls early on in the Fastrak usage about trying to get a credit card saved onto the account, because they weren’t saving it, and then they were charging fees for not saving it…lots of phone calls.  We got it all worked out though, and I paid my $2.5X whenever it would drop to $1.5Y.  Not that I had a choice because they just charged the card.  Fun! 

One day the replenish threshold went up to something like $2.2Y and the amount to $3.2X.  Wow.  But okay, I can handle this.  I mean I am using it 6 times a week and that’s just me.  Then I spend all this time counting the tolls and the days and checking the account online and making sure I can make it until the next payday – and before I know it, a few weeks ago, Fastrak ups the amount randomly, ups the replenish threshold to $4Y, and charges my credit card $5.2X, putting it over the limit, BTW.  WTF?

Well, I was incensed.  Well, I was annoyed.  And I felt like there should have been some kind of warning.  Especially since my usage hadn’t changed and I’m thisclose to being done with the MTC job and not going over the bridge 6 times a week.  Oh well.  I guess it’s all fine now.  And I’ve been watching the account online very closely and leaving large amounts of space between the current balance and the current replenish threshold (so scientific-y), just in case.  And I only have 4 more days of work up there in Mill Valley.  And so the last few days I’ve been just paying cash because even though you save a dollar using Fastrak, I save $5.2X when it doesn’t charge my credit card.

The point of this story is to say that the people who work in the tollbooths on the Golden Gate Bridge are extraordinarily and surprisingly nice.  They are just pleasant nice people who I could really get into a conversation with if it wasn’t foggy and drizzly outside and there weren’t cars behind me.  And that is refreshing, because I’m pretty sure that tollbooth workers in New York would be bitches.  Except I don’t remember any tolls on bridges in New York.  So maybe New York wins this round.  But the nice people will always win in the end.  At least that’s what I’m told.