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While private companies' contracts may seem outrageous, nothing beats the government agencies at this game:

a) The MTA may change the "FAST LANE Program Terms and Conditions" at any time by giving customers notice thereof. The terms and conditions shall become effective seven (7) days after such notice has been given. No written notice is required, and you hereby waive any requirement that written notice be provided. Such notice may be given through any means, including, but not limited to, advertising such notice in the media, posting such notice on message boards along the MTA's toll roadways, or otherwise, as determined by the MTA. If you have provided an electronic mailing address to the MTA with your application, you authorize that such notice may be provided by sending such notice to that electronic mail address, in the MTA's discretion.

The law is your tool to protect you from that. Don't give up your rights too easily.

The law is (or ought to be, unless, maybe, interpreted by 9 "wise Latina women") blind. It is supposed to protect all parties of a contract agreement fairly and equally. The only inequality is when an unclear item is found in the contract — such items are interpreted against the party, that originally crafted the contract.

I'll believe that *these* contracts fall under free market provisions of binding legal exchange of promises between two equal parties when *they* acknowledge the changes that I had written into the contract before sending it

If they began providing you with service without objecting to your changes, then they accepted them — even if you may have to go to court to prove it. Do so — someone, who implores others to "not give up rights so easily", really ought to...

Oh look, they've updated the terms again.

Either you gave them a permission to do that, or you have a right to discontinue service. Seriously, this is not rocket science...

Lastly, just in case this thread leads to an opinion, that private companies are particularly evil with changing contracts on the fly, here are the terms of governmental quasi-business monopoly in one of the most Illiberal States of the Union:

12. MODIFICATIONS

a) The MTA may change the "FAST LANE Program Terms and Conditions" at any time by giving customers notice thereof. The terms and conditions shall become effective seven (7) days after such notice has been given. No written notice is required, and you hereby waive any requirement that written notice be provided. Such notice may be given through any means, including, but not limited to, advertising such notice in the media, posting such notice on message boards along the MTA's toll roadways, or otherwise, as determined by the MTA. If you have provided an electronic mailing address to the MTA with your application, you authorize that such notice may be provided by sending such notice to that electronic mail address, in the MTA's discretion.

Khmm... My original posting in this thread, which was on topic, was moderated "off-topic" by an irate supporter of the "public healthcare option"... Oh, well. Let's switch to the topic of E-ZPass between us....

You pull into the reality lane and pay cash like everybody

Except the "cash" lines are increasingly scarce... With "E-ZPass" phasing out human operators, your only alternatives for cash payment is "exact change" on many exits. And some plazas are already "E-ZPass only" — at least, during certain hours of the day...

But, because joining E-ZPass is "voluntary", they aren't regulated or looked at and enjoy the best of both world's: the business' lack of oversight and the government's monopoly, which leads to the gems like this, for example:

a) The MTA may change the "FAST LANE Program Terms and Conditions" at any time by giving customers notice thereof. The terms and conditions shall become effective seven (7) days after such notice has been given. No written notice is required, and you hereby waive any requirement that written notice be provided. Such notice may be given through any means, including, but not limited to, advertising such notice in the media, posting such notice on message boards along the MTA's toll roadways, or otherwise, as determined by the MTA. If you have provided an electronic mailing address to the MTA with your application, you authorize that such notice may be provided by sending such notice to that electronic mail address, in the MTA's discretion.

The whole system is the "AT&T" all over again, and its designers in government — fascist fools ("fascist" as in "government runs businesses", not as in "death camps" — don't get worked up).

They should've put forth a standard and let multiple electronic-payment companies compete:

1. a motorist with an account with one of such companies approaches the gate, that's equipped with hardware from all of the competitors;
2. one of the competitors's devices recognizes the approaching car as "theirs" and opens the gate vouching to pay;
3. the car is on its way, the driver's account with one of the vendors is charged;
4. the money is sent to the road's owner (the State usually) and a portion of it is kept as the vendor's, wait for it...
5. Profit!

This would open the market to competition and encourage significant improvements in costs, privacy (there is no reason, why this service can't be as anonymous as phone-cards), and customer service... But one has to think like a free-market capitalist, rather than a Statist government functionary to come up with it...

Sorry, but as a mechanical engineering (who works with a lot of civil engineers), I can't let this one pass. You wrote:

I lie awake at night dreaming of only having to solve a problem as simple a bridge. It has only one use case: vehicles of a known weight with a known wheel surface traveling in predetermined paths at a predetermined rate of speed.

and then you wrote:

people would be in an uproar about all the deaths that are only possible because of the bridges: people jump off of them, cars crash over the guard rails, tornadoes and hurricanes wipe them out, and if they are not maintained properly they eventually fall to the ground under their own weight.

All of those factors do need to be accounted for in bridge design, along with many others (including wind loading, vibration, earthquake stability, pedestrian 'missiles', grade, water control, surface icing, freeze/thaw cycles, underbridge clearance, sewage & water/hazmat runoff, traffic flow, sight lines, and so on). Go read up on your state building codes. Or better yet, go down to your local college engineering library and have a look at SAE/ASTM/ANSI engineering standards for bridge design.

As for:

Books could be filled with the death stories of people killed by bridges

Amazon gives quite a few hits when searching "bridge disasters" books. Also, check around the NHTSA site some time.

And lets not forget that if a faulty bridge does fail (even in a non-fatal incident), the engineer that stamped the design may very well go the jail.

Is bridge design harder/simpler than software design? I don't know, but I do know that it's far from "simple."

[As an aside, you wrote:

Also, if you dig down deep enough on the Earth, there is always something solid to anchor the bridge.

While it's true that you can always reach bedrock if you dig deep enough, a lot of times it's not practical to dig deep enough to bedrock. For example, the Big Dig slurry walls go down more than 100 ft in some places and don't hit bedrock. In those cases, you have to different techniques (tiebacks, heavy masses, soil mixing/grouting etc) to anchor your structure. Not every location is like Manhattan]

It seems that whenever someone talks about using technology to track someone's movements or communications, immediately the civil rights people have to jump on it and scream about how its a violation of people's civil rights. If you're on the job, your boss has every right to know where you are during regular business hours. Don't want to be tracked after hours? Don't use your company phone after hours for personal use.

The non-sense is the frequency with which things have changed over the last decade or so. If you only drove around down there a couple of times a year (i.e. going to the airport, sporting event, etc) you would be faced with a new set of detours and re-routings every time. The signage was flacky at best. If everything stabalized, it shouldn't be too hard to drive through.

If you look around the country for major interstates coming together in downtown areas, you'll find plenty that are just as complicated as the one I linked in grandparent.

Incidently, in that photo, you can also see a swath of ground open for tunel construction. Once the big dig is completed things should at least stabalize (in theory). That doesn't meen there won't be things like the south bay interchange

As someone who lived through 11 years of it, I can say it was/is a pretty amazing worksite. In short, they moved a few miles of raised highway thru downtown Boston directly under ground. Added a few tunnels under Boston Harbor and built a stunning new bridge into town. Now if they can just fix the leaks, it will be quite cool.

Here's the link to the official site (Masspike.com)

> Why is it that after all this time and all these
> budget overruns that the people of Mass. haven't
> just said "This is a bad idea. Lets kill it!"?

Because eventually the elevated highway the tunnel replaced would have fallen into the streets. This needed to be done at some point.

> Eventually, they'll just call the project done
> and we'll have another Bradley Fighting Vehicle
> on our hands.

Actually, the tunnel is just about done. Thousands of people drive through it every day. See the Big Dig site for more info.

Transportation routes for hazardous materials must avoid population centers whenever possible. Like... Um... A major highway? The proposed route passes through the heart of the most populated areas

Speed Lane is called "EZ Pass" (WTF?) and rotaries are common.

I commute from Boston to Framingham each day. I used to be averse to passing on the right, but it makes me feel so good. I like to drive between 75 and 80 mph and stay in the left lane. I can't stand people who drive the speed limit in the left lane. If someone is coming up behind me who is moving faster than me, I pull into the middle lane and let them by. I wish that more people did this.

The only purpose that tolls serve is to give people something to do. Most toll plazas are poorly laid out. With FASTLANE open for the length of the masspike (why does their site need Java?), things have not gotten better. FASTLANE has removed one lane (typically) from each toll station that was previously used by people paying with Real Money (TM). At Exit 13, the FASTLANE replaced one of the two 'double server/single queue' lanes (two toll booths in the same lane). Either pike officials realized that the ds/sq system was inefficient, or they aren't really concerned with efficiency. I would like to get a FASTLANE transponder, but I refuse to. I'm waiting until the fall, when, supposedly, the system will be compatible with the EZPass system. EZPass is better (IMHO) for two main reasons:

- To get a FASTLANE transponder costs $27.50, including a refundable deposit. An EZPass transponder requires a $10 deposit, unless you start your account with a credit card, in which case the deposit is waived.

- EZPass is bank agnostic. A FASTLANE account requires a $50 deposit. Unless you are a BankBoston customer and you pay tolls through your checking account. EZPass requires a minimum deposit of $25 for everyone. Both systems require a minimum balance (FASTLANE requires $20). Why do both systems need to have some of my money all the time?

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that FASTLANE needs a corporate sponsor? I have to pay a toll, and the Commonwealth is either taking money from BankBoston, or BankBoston is getting free ads in exchange for some service they are providing the Commonwealth (administration of accounts?) About a year ago, I noticed a FleetBank ad on the reverse side of a toll schedule. I do not need spam in my car.

And what about the areas not frequented by commuters? There are typically fewer toll booths, one of which is now replaced with a FASTLANE. What incentive is there for the people in those areas who don't use the highway that often to get a transponder. Is the goal here to get a "transponder in every car"? For what purpose? Will we start getting speeding tickets in the mail based on the data collected from the transponders (distance between tolls divided by elapsed time equals average speed)?

I could take the commuter rail to get to work but I don't. I would either have to get up earlier than I want to, or I would not be to work at an acceptable time. I also have meetings outside of work that I have to go to and the commuter rail schedule does not give me the flexibility (or reliability) that I need for my schedule. Just today, my roommate was 20 minutes late coming home becuase a lightning strike disabled switching on a four mile section of track, stopping traffic in both directions.

I wouldn't mind being a particle. Travelling at relativistic speeds my commute would take one millionth of a second. I could get eight hours of sleep a night and still go to bed at 1am!