Aurora – A man dangles off a car’s trunk, shielding the license plate from a camera at an E-470 toll booth.
In another photo of scofflaws, a person holds what appears to be a child out of an SUV’s rear window to block the plate from the camera.
And a truck with strategically placed mud over the license plate appears in six photos taken on separate days. But the cameras also catch a business name and phone number printed on the truck, giving authorities an easy opportunity to catch the culprit.
Officials at the E-470 Public Highway Authority have seen it all and heard it all from people trying to get around paying tolls on the 47-mile highway east of Denver.
Officials estimate that 300 to 500 times a month, people tamper with their license plates to obscure them – which has been illegal since 2004. The evidence is in photos that show plates hidden with cardboard, mud or plastic covers.
Jo Snell, spokeswoman for the authority, keeps copies of the strangest photos taken by the cameras.
“How can people be so desperate to avoid paying 75 cents?” she asked.
What’s more ludicrous, said Snell, are excuses offered by some toll-evaders.
One woman said she was changing her clothes and didn’t want the toll booth attendant to see. A man claimed he couldn’t stop to pay the toll because he was fleeing from his angry wife in a car behind him. Another woman said she normally drives on E-470’s medians to avoid the tolls but forgot one day and drove on the highway without paying.
“It’s amazing what people will admit to,” Snell said.
Every day tens of thousands of cars drive on the 14-year-old highway, where tolls range from 50 cents to $1.75 per segment. When a toll isn’t collected or a transponder isn’t detected, E-470’s camera violation-enforcement system kicks in.
The system’s 128 cameras cover all 104 toll points and automatically snap photos of offending vehicles and their license plates. Plates are matched to car owners, and citations are sent through the mail.
Last year, for example, 2.9 million photos were taken of vehicles that didn’t pay tolls. About 700,000 photos were poor images, and almost 1.6 million of those cases were a result of problems in reading the transponders of legitimate EXpressToll customers.
More than 31,000 customers paid their tolls within the 48-hour grace period, but the authority still issued more than 178,000 citations in 2004.
“It probably amounts to $1 million in unpaid toll violations every year,” said David Kristick, E-470 operations director.
It’s a problem for the highway authority, which by 2035 must pay back $1.2 billion in loans used to build the toll road.
Before 2004, the E-470 authority sent warnings to first-time violators, asking them to pay the tolls plus a $7 administration fee. Last year, the authority dropped the warning system and now sends citations to everyone. They include civil fines of $40 to $100, depending on the number of violations, plus the toll and the $7 fee.
The dispute can go to court if payments aren’t made, Kristick said. If that doesn’t work, the driver’s license is suspended.
The result: $2.5 million collected from scofflaws last year, in contrast to the $334,735 collected in 2003. And more than 185,000 people had an outstanding-judgment warrant placed against their driver’s licenses because they didn’t pay E-470 citations last year.
Pending legislation would let the authority raise the maximum fine to $250 and create an administrative judge to hear only E-470 cases. Kristick estimates 1,500 E-470 cases are heard every month by judges in Arapahoe, Douglas and Adams counties.
Since E-470 debuted in June 1991, people have tried to skip the tolls. This, say ethicists, is just devious behavior from people seeking to buck the system.
“A lot of people think the system is stacked against the little guy. They want to even the playing field whenever and wherever,” said David Callahan, who wrote the book “Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong To Get Ahead.”
“People are hyper-focused on money these days; every little bit counts. A lot of ordinary, middle-class people are getting squeezed financially. That makes people more willing to cut corners.”
But, Callahan wonders, all of this for a 50-cent toll?
“That’s pretty pathetic.”
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer may be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.