From: Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@endTECH.com)
Date: Sat Jan 29 2000 - 10:21:37 PST
It seems that e-commerce will be more of a device than a piece of software.
I found out last night that you can now pay for McDonald's drive through anywhere
along the 73 with your FasTrak toll device. There's 250,000 McDonald's restaurants (not
in OC of course) and 250,000 FasTrak devices that have been activated so far. Someone
must have put 250 and 250 together. A search of the McD's web site [1] turns up no
press releases; a search of the FasTrak site turns up no press releases. It'll
be interesting to see how it works out. There's very little information about
the actual devices. It seems that they are a passive, are able to receive estimated
costs over localized signal and a deduction is made from a credit card account. Also,
there's a magic little silver bag called a "static bag" that you can put over it so that the toll doesn't
get deducted. If you are a carpooler, i.e. two or more people, you are allowed to travel the
tool road for free. You can use the same FasTrak device for both the 91 and the other local
transportation cooridors[3], but you get separate billing statements and have to have
separate accounts. I scanned through all their pages before sending them two questions:
"Does it have a battery and what happens if/when it runs out?"
Greg
[1] http://www.mcdonalds.com/
[2] http://www.tcagencies.com/index.html
[3] SR-241, SR-261, SR- 133, SR-73, SR-91, I-15 and the Carquinez Bridge.
-- Greg Bolcer email: gbolcer@endtech.com web: http://www.endtech.com work: 714.505.4970 cell: 714.928.5476 fax: 603.994.0516
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