I got EZPass! This is an Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) program: you install a small transponder device under your windshield, and an automatic sensor communicates with it as you drive through a toll plaza at reduced speed. The required tolls are then deducted from your account. One does not even need to keep track of the current balance: money is added through a credit card charge when the balance falls below a certain threshold.
So far, my subscription to EZPass has worked wonders on my commute. Having spent many a trip crawling towards the toll plaza that had already been sighted quite a while ago, it is a huge relief to bypass the long lines of cash-handling drivers and zip through the (nearly) empty ETC-only lanes.
Some times, though, congestion is so bad that the queues in the manual toll lanes back up all the way; the ETC lanes may thus be free, yet access could be blocked by the "manual" vehicles. This can be frustrating. Thankfully, I have encountered this only a few times (all before I got EZPass!)
The resident ETC program for Massachusetts is FastLane, but EZPass, a New York-New Jersey program, works just as well on this network.
