From: Mike Masnick (mike@techdirt.com)
Date: Sat Jan 29 2000 - 11:00:16 PST
Article in yesterday's Wired about the devices for the McDonalds:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33962,00.html
Those sorts of devices have been in use on the east coast for many years
(for tolls). It was a shock to discover they didn't have them for tolls
out here in California (and actually more of a shock to discover that tolls
are a lot harder to find here in CA). In NY, though, you're insane if you
don't have one of those devices (EZPass is what they call them there). For
a little while there was some sort of privacy concerns and I think they may
have even caught some criminal because he used an EZPass and so they
figured out where he was... Last time I was in NY, though, I noticed that
the majority of the tolls for the bridges were now EZPass enabled, and
there were only a few toll booths (with long painful lines behind them)
that weren't...
-Mike
At 10:21 AM 1/29/00 -0800, Gregory Alan Bolcer wrote:
>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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