eflow.ie

Our man in Havana

I see the NRA have their website http://eflow.ie up and running. It lists the penalties for non paying of the M50 toll.

My question is how are they going to deal with all the foreign reg cars? Will they be able to avoid the toll completely because they cannot find out the name and address to send the penalty notice to?

I would be keen to find an answer to that question.

miju

honest to god. what the **** is the point of the ads on the radio etc when you can't even register for an account yet.

completely pointless and waste of taxpayers money advertising a website thats not even open yet , grrrrrrr

cabrwab

This really annoys me!
We've paid for this road so many times, once it finished there should be no toll on it at all.
Talk about punishing people for travelling on it too though, €3 because you don't have a etoll tag.
Bulls*it.

whats the story if you already have easi-pass? does this transfer over automatically or do you have to re-do this?

edit: re read the website question answered!

L1011

Eazy Pass tags are eToll compatible so they will continue to work, as will all other eToll tags such as eTrip and the M4 and M8 tags.

Seth Brundle

whats this about?

JHMEG

That's Tag registration that's 25% cheaper, but the star is off over on it's own.

That website is very amateur. I wonder how much did they pay for it.

Gegerty

Yet people will still use it. I actually think the toll is quite reasonable, but I only use it once or twice a year to go to the airport so no biggie.

niceirishfella

JHMEG wrote: »

That's Tag registration that's 25% cheaper, but the star is off over on it's own.

That website is very amateur. I wonder how much did they pay for it.

Loads I'd say........and probably got some consultants to do it.

5500

It seems abit crap that you only have untill 8pm the next day to pay or your issued with a fine of a further 3euro,Ok its only 6euro but what if you were rushing to the airport ect and didnt have a chance to ring them only to arrive to a bill thats double?

I wonder how it will work with northern reg cars,will they be billed too?

Alun

cabrwab wrote: »

Talk about punishing people for travelling on it too though, €3 because you don't have a etoll tag.
Bulls*it.

And you've only got until 8pm the next day to pay it. What if, for example, you're flying out of Dublin airport to somewhere without internet access? I only use the existing toll maybe 2 or 3 times a year at the moment, so unless the registration for the number plate recognition version is as near as damn it free, I don't see me bothering. It seems to me that casual users of the toll are effectively being penalised. And as for the myriad of different, supposedly interoperative, tags with subtly different but easy to confuse names, why the hell don't they just settle on one tag, with the same name nationwide and sell them from one central location? It'll all end in tears I tell ya!

fletch

Tag Registration is 25% cheaper than Video Registration? If I use the toll once a month, using Tag Registration it will cost me €3, using Video Registration it will cost me €2.50

Our man in Havana

eireal wrote: »

I wonder how it will work with northern reg cars,will they be billed too?

That was my main question. Are they like speed cameras going to get away scot free whilst the law abiding pay up for their tolls. What sort of mechanism if any will there be to make foreign reg cars comply?

Seth Brundle

Bond-007 wrote: »

That was my main question. Are they like speed cameras going to get away scot free whilst the law abiding pay up for their tolls. What sort of mechanism if any will there be to make foreign reg cars comply?

How can they be billed when we don't know who the owner is?

Our man in Havana

kbannon wrote: »

How can they be billed when we don't know who the owner is?

Precisely. So I predict large amounts of foreign cars in the capital from August now. Cloned numberplates will also become a problem.
Something to address the issue will have to be done or enforcement will be meaningless.

peasant

There's another angle to this:

On video registration, you register your name and address, your car registration AND your bank or credit card details to the same database.

How can that be safe / legal ?

Seth Brundle

Update: I read in the Herald* at lunchtime that they will be employing private investigators to follow up foreign registrations. IIRC Shane Ross wrote the article and also claimed that this is where the majority of the €20million operating costs would go.

Interesting reading about the M50: http://www.shane-ross.ie/archives/311/money-money-money-must-be-funny-in-the-nras-world/#more-311


* so it must be true!

ART6

Like cabraweb said earlier (I'm straying off the point I guess, but...) we shouln't be paying tolls at all. But we didn't pay for this road initially -- the government bought it on HP and we then had to fund the repayments for years. Then, when we had done that, our honest, ethical ministers used our money, €600 million of it, to buy the road back. Somehow, though, we the public didn't get to own it, the government did, and now we have to pay them more than we paid the original owners to be permitted to use it. OK, its the LAW, but it's their law, not the people's. It does not serve the interests of a single member of the public in my view. We should be getting our so-called representatives by the scruff of their greedy necks and telling them firmly "the deal is off lads".

Our man in Havana

I guess that foreigners will drive free from August if experiences in the Uk are anything to go by.
http://www.osv.ltd.uk/newsletters/0507/

Seth Brundle

@ Bond - see my post (#16 above)

Our man in Havana

I doubt private investigators will have any effect due to their inability to acess vehicle databases of foreign nations. Also I doubt they have any ability to enforce on foreign soil.

chris85

This is ridiculus. I use the toll bridge once every so often, maybe couple of times a month and now i have to get an etolling card or register the reg plate or else i have to pay €3 at a later stage. Talk about a total inconvenience. will be avoiding the toll at all costs (pardon the pun )

I say we all drive up there on the day it starts and take off our plates and drive slowly in one lane. Slow protest with lots of notice to other users. big media campaign and all. although it is illegal to drive with no number plate so maybe not :rolleyes:

Edit: I really dont like their pricing marketing. 25% cheaper to use etoll but that 25% cheaper is no price drop from the regular €2 at the moment. pre registered video vehicles should not have to pay more. Total joke.

ardmacha

I doubt private investigators will have any effect due to their inability to acess vehicle databases of foreign nations. Also I doubt they have any ability to enforce on foreign soil.

Note the article quoted was 3 years ago. There is provision within the EU for the addresses of vehicles to be made available. Parking fines, toll fines etc are debts and can be enforced by debt collectors in the countries concerned. Dundalk council sent debt collectors after some delinquent NI folks who had multiple parking tickets.

Either the car is a tourist etc and they return to their countries, hardly worth following them up for one or two uses of the M50 and not a major proportion of M50 traffic. Or the car belongs to someone working in Dublin, passing regularly and running up a big debt of tolls and fines. In this case the investigators could simply seize the car in Ireland to pay the debts or perhaps identify where they are working and drop the summons off there.

Victor_M

Bond-007 wrote: »

I see the NRA have their website http://eflow.ie up and running. It lists the penalties for non paying of the M50 toll.

My question is how are they going to deal with all the foreign reg cars? Will they be able to avoid the toll completely because they cannot find out the name and address to send the penalty notice to?

I would be keen to find an answer to that question.

The simple fact is they will do nothing about it.

Yet another benifit of driving a foreign reg'd car in this country, on top of no VRT, road tax, in a lot of cases insurance (or insurance that isn't worth anything in this country), penalty points, tracability, NCT, accountability... think that's about it.

cabrwab

This is still really annoying me, almost as the time i drove up the n3 with a easi-pass to arrive at the toll-booth to be told it doesn't work! i need an e-tag!

Once again whilst we are too busy working and then getting caught up in never ending Rush Hour traffic this goverment have screwed us.

Its such a stupid idea one to raise tolls by €1 or 50c for no reason other then they can, but then to penalise those that don't pre registered.
Im just worried we'll all be getting wrong bills in the post because
1) this thing will be another piece of goverment funded faulty tech

2) when we sell the cars the two data-bases won't match and the people using your old car will be charging you for there journey to and from dublin airport!
or
3) People will clone reg plates and the equipment will be working perfect!

Only scare mongering i know. I just think the tolls should be abolished, we have all suffered a road tax hike this year, we are all paying a nice tax on every litre of petrol/diesel/air we use!