OyVey - have you ever heard of the Long Island Railroad?

You New Yorkers just keep proving the point, over and over and over again, about your hostility, nastiness, negativity, superiority-complex, narrowmindedness, lack of compassion (oh, excuse me, I forgot about the WTC -- but did YOU forget about the Pentagon????), rudeness, crustiness, and all-around full-of-yourself-ness.<BR><BR>You're driving from NJ and you have to get to Eastport, LI. It needs a car.<BR><BR>Now then: all you bigshot "Da Cop Wuz Right to Pinch You Joiks" people: I'd really love to be behind you driving from Revere, Mass, through the Sumner/Callahan tunnel and into downtown Boston to get to Cambridge during rush hour. THAT would be rich!

Ooooh, my tunnel's badder than your tunnel! That's so intelligent Cereal.<BR><BR>Its funny how cab drivers who've been in the country about a week can figure out how to get through the tunnels, but not Diane and her ilk. Do us all a favor. Next time, stay in the suburbs.

<BR><BR><BR>I LOVE NEW YORK<BR><BR>But the whiny tourists suck! Go back to the farm, Diane !

xxx, Yes, I've heard of the Long Island railroad. So then your advice for someone coming from say, upstate Connecticut or New York would be to first drive to the train in Connecticut (Or Hudson Line), take the train into Grand Central, Then take another train to get to Long Island, and then when they get to Long Island and need to get around do what, rent a car? Like I said, that's just about the worse travel advice I've ever heard on this forum. I guess it shows what level of intelligence we're dealing with here.<BR><BR>Oyvey!

Oh yeah! Let's here it for Jill! A round of aplause please to yet another clueless poster who claims it's sooooo easy to drive through those bridges and tunnels because - get this folks - she's been doing it for 30 years! Good for you Jill, you must be some kind of driver if it's such a breeze after only thirty years.<BR><BR>Really amazing.

"dumb" is a good alternate name for you,"Another New Yorker" and whatever else you keep posting on here as.<BR>THis thread is completely ridiculous.<BR> Funny how Diane has kept quiet since she posted this.

If you've lived in a metropolitan area like New York you know how bad traffic can be. Visiting friends or going to a party you want to go to is sometimes not worth spending hours in traffic -- often at bridges and tunnels. So when the EZPass came around it was like a godsend. It's made life much better for people who live around NY or travel here. I think that's why people have such strong feelings about this topic. For once NYers were given a break from mind numbing traffic jams and we want to be sure this works.

Hmmm... Have we been successfully trolled or what?? See below...<BR><BR>Not Fine: Some Innocent EZ Pass Drivers Getting Charged <BR>(New York-WABC, April 4, 2002) — Life in the fast lane is taking an unfair toll on some New Jersey EZ Pass users. <BR>The Port Authority says a number of drivers have received $100 summonses after the EZ Pass system, and then police, mistakenly identified them as toll cheats. Officials blame the problem on a system glitch and overzealous police. <BR> <BR>

Michelle, I think the story you're referring to (and others I've seen like it) refer to people who ARE E-Z Pass users but the computer glitches made it look as though they passed through E-Z pass lanes without proper authorization or without enough money in their accounts.<BR><BR>Diane, I understood your story to be an account of an unpleasant situation and you wanted "to get everyone's opinion about something that happened "<BR><BR>If you ignore the unnecessarily nasty comments here, what you're left with is <BR>something to chalk up to a bad experience that could probably happen anywhere. Many of us have gotten parking or speeding tickets when driving <BR>in an unfamiliar area and there's not really much you can do. If you feel that the police officer was truly abusive (something I don't see you saying from your description), then absolutely report him. His info will be on the summons. As far as the fine, I know it's unpleasant, but you're best off just paying and getting on with your travels. When I got a rather large speeding ticket when I didn't see a sign, I asked about it, the officer showed it to me, and I realized that just because I didn't look carefully didn't mean that I innocent. I did apologize, said that I hadn't realized the situation and then the officer politely handed me a ticket. I was very upset, but decided to enjoy the rest of my trip, because that $120 (for driving at the horrible speed of 42 mph, of all things) was not coming back to me no matter how badly I felt about it...

Oh, sorry for the mis-information. My apolgies.

True-we got a notice from EZPass regarding our pass not being read (or lack of a pass) at a toll booth.We could send in the $28-or if we are EZPass holders,send in 3-because it did not read it.We sent in the $3- and nothing like that has happened again.<BR>But I still think that a glitch here and there is worth the ease going through those lanes, while the lanes with non EZpass cars sit in longer and longer lines.

Well, this has certainly been a half-hour poorly spent reading this thread! <BR><BR>ANYWAY, As a born and raised NY'er now living in Ann Arbor Michigan, by moving out of NY I have made the following observations about NY and it's people:<BR><BR>New York drivers are not patient and are intolerant. I think in any big city, where there are people everywhere you look, losing patience is inevitable. But the intolerance is something else.<BR>Living somewhere else has taught me that there really and truly is a different way of life out there, in other words, the hypertensive lifestyle of metro ny is not the be all end all, and just because you live it every day, doesn't mean your way is the best way to be. Everytime I drive over the GW bridge into the Bronx my knuckles automatically get white. Believe me, whatever the reason, EZ Pass, getting cut-off, blowing off a mistake that was 99.9% honest, none of these things will affect our bottom line...you're going to get where you're going, you're agenda is truly not any more important than anyone else's even though you're convinced otherwise and in light of 9/11, all of us, ny'er or not, should thank God that we were not in those planes or towers or a family member left behind.....I'll take the traffic, tickets anyday, and be the more wiser to let things just "ride" a little from now on....being angry and pissed off over traffic issues is a big waste of time, and very egocentric.<BR><BR>JC

<BR>Well I just checked in and see this turned into a nasty discussion.<BR>My advice remains the same, Diane. <BR>I posted on 5/21.I am sorry for your unpleasant experience. Let me know what happens.

What's an EZ pass? I just wonder what you would say if something similar happened to you while driving abroad?

I drive abroad and have no problems there either.<BR>What would a person who lives abroad have to say about driving in the US?

I thought of adding this URL to the &quot;best posts&quot; thread, but can't find the thread!

Have Fodor's outdone themselves and deleted their own thread?

I am 100-percent sympathetic for Diane. And I see that New Yorkers still have the same &quot;charm&quot; they had when I left New York in 1970! What declass&eacute; boors. (The only place where people honk as rudely at you as they do in New York is in Naples, Florida, which tells me lots of New Yorkers must have retired to there.) I had a similar experience on the Garden State Parkway last October. I received notices for passing not one, but three, EZ-Pass tolls. They sent photos of the license tag of the rented car taken by cameras in the sky, presumably where the EZ Pass lane signs also were hung. I think the signs are hung at a level easy to read from a tall SUV or bus, so the low-slung Dodge Stratus we rented put us at a low angle where they were hard to read. Anyway, I remember when they built the Garden State Parkway in 1954. I drove it for years as a resident and visitor. After they added the express lanes in the 70s, you always moved to the left for express lanes, right for local lanes. Now the left lanes are EZ Pass lanes. If there is a way to get into the express lanes without gong on the EZ Pass lanes, I was not able to figure it out. And who wants to take local lanes all the way down the shore? Large signs are no good in 16 lanes of heavy traffic because you can't move over in time. Out-of-state drivers don't have ESP so they can get into the right lane miles ahead of time like people who drive that road every day. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I may never go &quot;home&quot; again because &quot;home&quot; is a messed-up, inhospitable place. And, by the way, people outside the New York metropolitan area are much more polite than New Yorkers and Northern New Jerseyans. Even Southern sheriffs call the people they are giving tikets to &quot;Sir.&quot;

Why revive a 5 year old post just to complain about EZPass? It's a great idea, works perfectly for people who have one and helps keep traffic moving for everyone.

Every city, state, country etc has specific rules/regulations concerning driving and parking - many involving passes, use of certain specific lanes, obtaining parking tokens etc. This should not be a mystery to anyone who ever drives beyond their local neighborhood.

It's up to the driver of the car to watch for this and deal with it as it occurs. (And for anyone who can;t figure out how to change lanes in heavy traffic - PLEASE stay off any sort of highway - since this IS something you need to know how to do to drive properly.)

And if you make a mistake - that's what it is - YOUR mistake - and you need to pay for it. No one is suggesting anything deliberate or criminal is involved - but giving a traffic ticket to someone gumming up the works will (hopefully) not only prevent them from doing it again - but may serve to convince those who see it not to try to cheat.

(I don;t see that anyone was arrested or handcuffed. Someone broke the law and got a ticket - big deal!)