Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Have any of you used EzPass or SmartTag on your bike? (RFID based toll payment method for those who don't have them or even better don't often experience toll roads) I need to make a trip up I-95 between DC and NYC. Couple questions...

1. If you have your car registered on the EzPass will they complain if you use it with your bike. Technically I'm probably overpaying but I don't make this trip often so I don't want to get one dedicated to my bike and I want the convenience of using the EzPass only lanes

2. If you do use it, do you mount it on the bike somewhere (if so where ?) Can I get away with just putting it in a tank bag or having it in my jacket breast pocket ?

3. I've never seen a motorcycle go through the high speed EzPass lanes (55 MPH) has anyone done it without problems (ie them mailing you a ticket a month later cause it didn't register properly) ?

Any other hiccups you've experienced that I might need to consider ?

Thanks in advance and happy and safe riding!

1. Our bikes are also registered on our EZPass account. We've been on long road trips where I know the transponder didn't read right at every toll booth, but haven't ever gotten a ticket/bill, because the bikes are on the account.

2. I put mine in the map pocket on top of my tank bag. My wife mounts hers on the inside bottom of her wind screen.

3. Can't help you there. Only one high-speed around here I know of, down at the south end of the NJ Pike, and haven't ever taken the bike through it.

I've been told the reader is mounted overhead, in the middle. I get my best results keeping the bike in the middle of the toll both lane.

I go through a couple of high speed EZ pass tolls and have no problems with them. The biggest problem I have are some NY tolls, that don't read the tag and have a bar across the lane. Have to wait for a cop - take off pass and they wave it like a magic wand over some box, press a button, give you back your EX pass unit. You put it back on your bike and then off you go.

Mine is mounted on my handlebars using a RAM Mount. I had to play with the positioning to get it to work reliably in many tolls, but once I had it set up it works much more reliably than I've had in the past.

I usually slow down a lot for the regular EZPass toll gates - makes sure I see it paid or the toll unpaid - and then take off. Sometimes I wonder if it picks up the car behind me in cases where cars don't like to the appropriate speed for the toll. Remember, they can give you a ticket of some sort for going through too fast on the fast and regular speed EZ pass. Big Brother is watching. Behaving through the tolls is such a little thing to not pay tolls with cash. I did it for a week and it drove me crazy.

My EZPass is mounted with that lovely DualLok stuff on the inside of my windscreen. I slow down a bit for the toll, and have not had any problem with it being read.

P

I mounted it on the windshield of my Vulcan and it wouldn't read in NY but everywhere else it did. I had to resort to putting it in the breast pocket and it would get picked up more than mounted on the windshield but this was also hit or miss but it was on the inside of the shield so it wouldn't be out in the wind. I then took the final approach and mounted it on the tank and it gets picked up 95% of the time with some tolls in NYS giving me problems. Granted the tank mounting is on the Ninja.

I bought an EZPass Express from a gas station and had to register it under motorcycle as tolls are cheaper for bikes. The instructions forbid you to pass the EZ Pass to another type of vehicle or another vehicle period since it is logged under a certain license plate. If you get caught there is some kind of penalty but I don't know what it is.

if there comes a point where you have to take the EZ Pass off to wave in front of a toll booth make sure that you place it back securely before you take off.

In Il you can just registar several additional cars or bikes license plates online and it all comes off the main accounts. Only 1 physical device is required and 4 other vechicles can be added on by just adding license plate info.

So the device is on my car but the State has my bikes plate number already to use my cars account.

Sorry if this is confusing.

Unfortunately, confusion is the net result when different groups of states choose different policies and even different companies to implement RFID pases for tolls. Right now, you can't take your ezpass to any state in the union. It only becomes an issue when you are doing cross-country riding. I think somehow I made it down to Florida and back without any issues. EZpass has a site showing what states take it - but in the end, some of these devices use different protocols and so, cannot be used everywhere.

Rhadam, I can't believe the amount of tolls they have in NJ and some parts of NY. The Garden State Pkwy seems to have a toll every few miles. What a royal PITA when you are on a bike.
That's one of the things I love about CT, no tolls whatsoever.

Okay cool, in Virginia I was able to login to my EzPass account online and add my motorcycle as one of the vehicles on my account. Unfortunately here's what they say on their FAQ page:

However, we do not currently have a transponder that is designed for use with motorcycles. The transponder is designed to function best at an angle, similar to the one created by the windshield of a passenger vehicle. A transponder mounted on a motorcycle is at the customer's "own risk and liability."

Whatever that means

So anyway, I guess I'll have to try out the breast pocket and the windscreen mount and maybe the tank bag approach. Although I left some food in my tank bag last weekend and my dog assumed it was for her. How silly of me to forgot to leave the bag unzipped. So long story short I'm without a tank bag for now...

Bummer that it's a trial and error thing but looks like the closer you can get to the orientation of it mounted on a cars windshield, the better the success, at least according the VA EzPass website...

Thanks for the tips all.

I tried it in my breast pocket on the Rip Van Winkle and it never worked. I'm using a windshield now with the tape things and haven't had a problem. It works on the t-way too, so far.