I should have added that it’s hard for me to imagine navigating the east coast corridor without an EZ Pass.
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You can get a transponder pass with your rental car. I think your son can get a pass at a variety of stores. It will be 100% worth it!
Beware if you are going through with a rental car, because they will add a crazy surcharge to the toll. “Processing fee”…yah right!
Do a google search for suggestions on not getting ripped off for this!
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Yes! That processing fee can be as high as $25 per toll! At least it was in the past.
For rental cars, I’ve been offered the pass for a flat fee for the rental period (I think $6.95 or 15) and then you pay the tolls. If you don’t opt for the fee, then you pay a lot if you do go through a toll. Either way, it is more than just paying the tolls.
In Florida, you can just pay the toll and it is usually just a few dollars so I never got a Sun Pass. In the NE, I think you need a pass.
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Yea, we had a macbook and a chromebook in car with us. Wifi hotspot would have worked well, but by the time it came obvious that transponder registration would be tricky on the cellphone he was already committed… afraid to bail out.
We had a few weeks to plan, but we never did find a way to buy and set up transponder in a distant state ahead of time. We did research where to stop to buy at grocery store. (Too bad I goofed navigating us there… went to geographic center of Middletown NY by mistake. After 9 hours of driving and this goof we were not in a good mood even before the clunky transponder setup).
You are going to have to pay a toll to cross the Hudson at some point if you come up through Harrisburg. Picking up 84 in Scranton takes you all the way through Sturbridge Mass until you take the Mass Pike into Boston. 84 crosses over the Hudson at the Beacon-Newburgh Bridge in NY. I know that the Mid-Hudson Bridge (further north crossing at Poughkeepsie) still has old school toll booths and a cash lane. Not sure if Beacon-Newburgh is EZ Pass only at this point.
Thanks all - We’ll keep an eye out for transponders at stops along the way. I’m not opposed to paying some tolls; I’m just trying to spare us from getting multiple horrendous processing fees x 2.
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Our EZ pass setup saga in my above posts was in prep for Beacon-Newburgh bridge over the Hudson River. As of May 2021, they still had a cash lane. That was good because the pass we had painstakingly set up on the cellphone in the car in a MIddletown grocery store parking lot had a lag time. The toll both operator predicted it would probably be good by 7am next day. It seemed to work ok after that on midhudson bridge and Mass Turnpike etc when we went to Cape Cod near Boston.
Looks like there is a Price Chopper supermarket in Newburgh (39 N. Plank Road) right before the bridge that sells EZ Pass. I think you can also go into the NYS Thruway Authority building that is on Beacon side of the bridge to buy one, but if memory serves, access is on the westbound side of 84, not the eastbound that you will be using. Am I right about that @Colorado_mom ?
Ha… had to verify to on Google. Tolls on the Newburgh Beacon Bridge are one-way only . Drivers crossing the Hudson River going eastbound (ie starting at at Newburgh side) are tolled. But the cash price, while we waited for setup time, was not bad
I think we used a Price Chopper in Middletown… Newburgh might have worked better.
Are you taking a rental car? If so…THAT is where you will see surcharges with EZ Pass.
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Harvard just sent out a notice due to the hurricane that is going to hit MA on Sunday:
People who were scheduled to move in Sunday should adjust their plans if possible, moving in one day earlier or later.
That is a very good idea!