#AUSTIN TOLL TAG FREE#

Yet there’s a toll plaza charging people $1. The distance from I-35 to the end of Hwy 1 (or Loop 1 as they call it) was only a few miles.

#AUSTIN TOLL TAG FREE#

This saves me one day on the rental car, staying at an airport hotel that has a free shuttle (La Quinta). I get my food from the restaurant, check in my hotel near the airport, and return the rental car. I’m driving on surface streets now with no tolls. So I pick another top Mexican restaurant which is called Torchy’s Tacos. I continue to the restaurant, and guess what, it’s not even open yet, they open at 05:30pm and it was 3pm when this happened. Ok, I just went through a toll plaza, didn’t have the device Thrifty wanted to sell me, now what? I don’t know at this point. Then he was arrested for having guns in his car. He approached the boarder and couldn’t turn around. This would be similar to what happened to the Marine who is in a jail in Mexico. I drive through and see the camera flash as it takes a picture of my car. There’s no humans in the toll booths, it says to drive through, we’ll bill you. Now I’m reaching for money and moving over to the right. I keep driving, approaching the toll plaza. I tried to exit, there was no “last exit before toll” signs. So I get on HWY 45 (north of Austin), it leads to 1, and there’s a toll booth. The signs have the highway numbers and say toll under the numbers, but I wasn’t looking at the signs, I was paying attention to the GPS. I was following the GPS and took the exit from I-35 to I-45 to Loop 1. When you drive long distances on highways, you get memorized in playing leap frog, trying to keep moving, but stay at the speed limit. However, this one time, I forgot to set the “Avoid Tolls Option.” This was a big mistake. I searched for this in google maps, and said go. In this case, I wanted Mexican, the restaurant I decided on was Fonda San Miguel. I use Trip Advisor for that, picking the cuisine I want, and the top restaurant.

On the way back, I was looking for a great Mexican restaurant to visit in Austin before checking into my hotel. I drove back to Austin, it’s 200 miles on the I-35. I visited Six Flags over Texas and it was awesome. Next I drove 280 miles north to Arlington on the I-35. Things went great at these parks, food and hotels were great. I drove to San Antonio to visit Six Flags Fiesta Texas and Schlitterbahn. There’s an option to “Avoid Toll Roads” but you have to set that option for each trip. Instead, I use my iPhone5 with Google maps.

In the past, there was no extra fee for a toll device, it was already in the car and you would be billed by Plate Pass. They now have a toll device people can rent, but it’s $10 a day, I declined. I flew in on Monday May 26th because it’s a great time to vacation as most people are going back to work. I picked the city of Austin because it’s in the middle. I flew to Austin to visit the two Six Flags parks, one in Arlington, and one in San Antonio. I’m sure this same situation has happened to others, especially if you drive north of Austin, then come back. And please don’t bring out the idiot card, it’s very easy to arm chair behind a keyboard. If you rent for 4 days, that would mean paying $45 to cover tolls. Thrifty wants to charge $10 A DAY for a toll device, and if you go through a toll, they want you to add the toll device to your contract for ALL DAYS, even if you only go through a toll for $1.

Cliff Notes: Be very careful when renting a car in Austin and declining the toll option from the rental car company.

Austin toll tag