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The Bay Area Toll Authority, Highway and Transportation District, the Golden Gage Bridge, and Xerox State and Local Solutions have been hit with a class action lawsuit alleging that the Golden Gate Bridge’s electronic tolling system implemented in March 2013 unfairly assesses fees to drivers, not giving them enough notice or time to pay for crossing the bridge before they are penalized with late fees.
Lead plaintiff, Michael Saliani, alleges in his class action lawsuit that the recently implemented tolling system that is now mandatory for all drivers crossing the land mark leads to fines of $76 resulting in a windfall for the bridge and its private contractor who manages the tolling system, Xerox.
Last spring, the Golden Gate Bridge removed the option for drivers to manually pay the $6 toll to cross and became an all-electronic tolling system, alleges Saliani in the Golden Gate toll class action lawsuit.
Under the electronic program, drivers can mount a transponder in their vehicle and enroll in the “FasTrak” program which deducts money from their account through the program every time the driver passes under a sensor in the bridge. Otherwise, drivers who do not enroll and use the FasTrak program must pay online through the “Pay-By-Plate” program either 30 days before crossing the bridge or within 48 hours of their crossing.
Under the Pay-By-Plate program, the driver’s license plate is recorded and assessed the toll. According to the complaints, 85 percent of the vehicles that cross the bridge are enrolled in the FasTrak program, while those who are not enrolled in the FasTrak or License Plate Account programs, and who do not make the onetime payment online under the Pay-By-Plate program, are assessed a toll evasion violation that they must pay within 30 days.
“(V)ehicle owners who fail to pay the $6 toll within 30 days after citation – regardless of whether the vehicle owner actually receives notice of the toll evasion violation – are assessed a $25 penalty,” Saliani alleges in the Golden Gate FasTrak class action lawsuit, and “[v]ehicle owners who fail to pay the toll and $25 penalty are assessed an additional $45 ‘delinquency’ penalty. As a result, vehicle owners may be required to pay $76, or over ten times the amount of the toll, for each Golden Gate Bridge crossing.”
The Bay Area Toll Authority and Golden Gate Bridge contracts with Xerox, a private company, to provide notices to vehicle owners, conducting initial reviews of toll evasion violations that are challenged by the owners, and also to impose and collect penalties, alleges Saliani in his class action lawsuit. Further, argues Saliani, Xerox and the Golden Gate Bridge “have implemented a policy for assessing toll evasion violations and imposing and collecting penalties in a manner that assures that vehicle owners cannot meaningfully contest violations and pay inflated and outrageous penalties.”
Saliani alleges that Xerox does not put enough effort into locating drivers toll evasion notices, including obtaining up-to-date and correct mailing addresses and, because drivers often do not receive notice of a toll violation, “Xerox receives a bounty on all toll fees and penalties that it collects.”
In his class action lawsuit, Saliani alleges that “[s]ince the Golden Gate Bridge converted to an all-electronic tolling system in March 2013, penalties assessed on toll evasion violations have become an important source or revenue for defendants,” further “defendants released data showing that for the first four months of operation of the all-electronic tolling system, they issued 290,489 toll evasion violations and collected nearly $3 million in penalties.”
The Golden Gate FasTrak class action lawsuit also alleges that the defendants’ actions in assessing tolls on the Golden Gate Bridge violate the California Due Process Clause and mandatory duty laws and amount to unfair business practices, and negligence.
Saliani seeks puitive damages as well as an injunction requiring the Golden Gate Bridge and Xerox to refund fees and penalties to drivers, reverse any DMV registration holds, and provide owners with a fair and impartial review of their toll evasion violations.
Lead plaintiff, Michael Saliani, is represented by Adam Gutride with Gutride Safier.
Case information for the Golden Gate FasTrak Class Action Lawsuit was not available at the time this article was published.
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48 thoughts onGolden Gate Bridge FasTrak Fees Rack Up Class Action Lawsuit
I just received a 5100 dollar bill from the fast track collection agency for 3 passages over the Golden Gate bridge. Moved twice, did not forward mail. And did not receive bills until it had gone to collections.HELP
same here!
I got a bill for $10,000.00 Have you got any help resolving this issue? Please help if so
I keep getting this violations with the right license plate documented but the one in the pictures is not my car nor the license plate fastrak has a flow in their systems miss reading the license plates characters like letter E for an F.
I received a violation for Bay Area bridge. My enduro motorcycle has never left a 30 mile radius from my home in so. Cal. That’s 8 hours away from Bay Area. The picture they sent shows a white spot and I can’t make out any license number. Evidently they couldn’t either. There seems to be no reprocusions to the fastrak system for fraudulent mailings. This kind of thing costs real people time and money resolving it!
I received the same bogus letter.
Does anyone respond to these posts? What about Bay Area fastrak? They received a fine for these types of problems, I have had my Income tax intercepted for a car I traded in 2 years prior, despite me tracking down the DMW inquiry report, they never dismissed the huge amount of violations. They are terrible
I live no where near the Golden Gate Bridge, in fact I reside and work in Ventura County in Southern California. Received a notice today reporting that on the February 4 my vehicle and I were in crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Bogus! I was at work in Port Hueneme with my vehicle at 6:45am. I have not been anywhere near San Francisco since 10 years ago after moving here from DC. So this is false. Also the picture shows a wider vehicle missing my registration sticker as well as off by a digit. Why am I forced to pay this fee knowing I must register my vehicle in March?
I live in Ontario CA and my car has been non operational for 5 months and I personally have not been in SF for over 25 years. I believe since this system is so badly functioning that victims like us should be entitled to a payment for our time to correct the problems and the negligence that is inherent.
My girlfriend just went to register her car and they want her to pay 500+ in fees. Never got a notice in the mail. We think it was when her friend came from another state to visit and borrowed her car. But how can we know? How can they just charge whatever they want and then try and restrict our access to work via car registration if we don’t pay.what darkness is at work here?
I crossed the bridge got an invoice and paid via check. two months later I got a violation saying I owe them $35. I contested to violation and even sent them a copy of the cashed check. their reply was you are still in violation and owe us the monies. how can this be? and we the people who are innocent have no recourse against this fraud! is there anything any of us can do to clear out good names?
I am not a citizen of the screwball State of California. I was visiting my family out there, and during the course of taking my son to the airport I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. No one warned me that there were no longer human toll-takers on the bridge, and that I was going to be subjected to this incredibly ridiculous system. Of course, there was no way I could have known about any of the 24 hour cash payment locations in the area, and though Zerox did make sure an invoice was mailed to my home in Florida… I did not receive it in time to make the payment by credit card or the U.S. snail-mail system. I will not be paying any penalties or other add-on fees, but rather, I would like to find out more about how to join in this Class Action Suit and add my name to the list of people who are not willing to roll over and take it up the wazoo. Kiss my A$$, Zerox and the State of California. This is just further proof that your state is run by criminals and crazies, and I am sure that the Florida DMV will back my play.
That’s a sweet van. It must be like the Jetta that I owned about 8 years ago. It magically appears in San Francisco every summer and I get the toll invoice.