Well, what happened around here was that the state of illinois contracted with some company to do all of the roads, paid them up front, and had the work guaranteed to be done in 5 years. That was 30 years ago. What ended up happening was that the contractor took the money, only paved 1/2 of regulation (so half the thickness of what the roads were supposed to be) with inferior material, so before the road was even done, it would need patching, so this same company has been paid to patch the roads it messed up every year for the past 30 years. For some reason in the past year, this all came to light and the state got someone else in to do the road construction and re do all of the roads that should have been done 25 years ago.
Which is why we say up here we have 2 seasons, winter and road construction.
Now, with the tolls, we just got done with a huge refirb there too. All of our tolls DOUBLED recently for cash payers, unless you have the I-Pass, you're paying between 80 cents and 1.50 per toll. On the same token, the state also hired an auditing firm to go through the last 15 years of toll tapes to actually catch all of the toll offenders.
The way THAT works is that you blow a toll, it's okay, you do it again, shame on you, after 5 times, you get a bill in the mail.. Not only do they charge you the toll you blew, but a $20 fine for EACH offense... so what was a 50 cent toll has turned into a 102.50 fine (cuz you dont' get the statement till you do it 5 times)
We recently went throught a big amnesty thing here, because not only were people getting their $20 processing fee, but major fines on top of that, so for someone who (over the past 15 years) blew through say, 20 tolls (and sometimes there are no attendants on duty and if you don't have change... what can you do?) they have toll bills in the thousands.
One of Ryan's friends was recently over and he had his arbitration date for amnesty recently, his six THOUSAND dollar fine got talked down to like fifteen hundred, and he has another friend who owes upwards of SIXTY grand for tolls. Apparently the guy never once paid a toll.
And around here there are just sometimes that you can't avoid taking the tolls.
So, no matter how bad ya'll think you have it, nobody has a more corrupt road system than Illinois :o