Initially priced at $10, the electronic toll-collection transponders will cost $20.95 as of June 1.

You best hurry if you want to buy your E-ZPass transponder at a discount.

The Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority is planning to price the electronic toll-collection units at $20.95 each as of June 1. That’s up from $10 for an initial transponder and $15 for a second one that the agency is currently charging.

Additional units are sold at $20.95, which is what the RITBA pays for them.

The transponders grant access to the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge. Rhode Islanders with transponders are billed 83 cents per crossing. Folks with a transponder from another state are billed $1.75 per crossing compared to $2 for a cash transaction.

“It’s expensive to discount the transponders,” said David Darlington, chairman of the Board of Directors at RITBA. “We now need to cover our costs. The subsidies have cost $600,000 so far.”

At the same time, Darlington said RITBA was hardly taking advantage of the price increase.

“We’re moving the price up to cost,” he said.

“We’re not making any money but we’re not losing any money.”

“It was always the plan that we were not going to absorb the cost forever,” agreed Kathryn O’Connor, supervisor of the E-ZPass walk-in center in Jamestown.

The program to introduce the E-ZPass automatic tolling system has been more than successful, with some 52,000 transponders sold to date.

Darlington noted that a consultant had projected sales of 25,000 in the first two years.

“Instead we’ve had 52,000 in four months,” he said.

O’Connor attributed the additional sales to a demand from out of state.

Noting that the average number of daily one-way trips on the bridge ranges from about 13,000 in the winder to 22,000 in the summer, and that many of those trips were return ones, O’Connor said sales of 52,000 far exceeded such demand.

“Many people do not use the bridge,” she said, citing customers buying transponders so they can travel “to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Florida.”

She added the walk-in center was still busy and selling “a fair number,” noting demand from “snowbirds coming back up [north].”

“There are still people coming through,” she said. “I don’t have anyone twiddling their thumbs.”

“It’s been the most successful rollout from a penetration standpoint of any of the 14 states using E-ZPass,” said Darlington (although it should be noted that Rhode Island has only one toll charge).

“It was the fastest transition of any of them,” he said.

Noting it had been “a culture shock” for the staff to change the way of doing things at the tolling plaza, he said “overall I am very happy about the time it took and the relative lack of disruption.”

For more information, call (877) 743-9727 or go to:

www.ritba.org

pelsworth@projo.com