FastLane and E-ZPass troubles: Part 2
(flickr tag: traffic light)
In Part 1, I described the problems my husband and I had when we first got an E-ZPass (which works just like FastLane). We received 3 violations and had to pay $5 in administrative fees for each one even though we had a perfectly good transmitter in our car. Recently, we decided to give FastLane another try and here is what we learned about their system.
If you have a valid FAST LANE transponder and your account is in good standing, you should see a green light indicating that your transponder has been read and processed. If you see a yellow light that shows “Low Bal” (i.e. low balance), your account needs to be replenished. If you receive the top yellow “Call FAST LANE” light it indicates the following: You were recorded as a violation and you are required to contact the FAST LANE Service Center toll free at 1-877-MASSPIKE (877-627-7745) (option 2) to determine why your FAST LANE transaction was not recorded. You should not use any FAST LANE until you have contacted the FAST LANE Service Center and verified that your account is in good standing and that your transponder is working properly. If you disregard the message and continue to use FAST LANE, you will be issued violations. A violation results in a $50.00 fine per occurrence.
From How FAST LANE Works.
There is a more detailed explanation here: Plaza Light Information.
The important thing to note here is that there are 2 yellow lights, each meaning something completely different. To place that in context, here is what the toll booth looks like:
Whoever designed this system, figured a traffic light was a good idea for alerting people about the status of their transaction. In some ways, this makes sense: If you get a green light, you know that you’re all set to go; if you get a yellow light, you know something went wrong. What’s missing is a red light.
Seeing the familiar traffic light metaphor, it is natural to assume that if you get a yellow light, the other two must be green and red so you don’t need to pay much attention to what the text on the light says. When you know about traffic lights and how they work, you probably only pay enough attention to see what color you get, not where it is located. In addition, when you see the light, you’re driving at about 15 miles per hour so you may not even be able to read the text on the light (as you can see in the diagram, the lights are pretty small).
This, I believe, is at the root of the problem. FastLane uses a traffic light metaphor that has been modified to the point where the metaphor no longer applies. Instead, the use of this modified metaphor creates problems for their customers that they have to pay money to resolve.
The solution to this problem is quite simple: get rid of the traffic light metaphor and install LED displays instead that would show the status of the transaction in large colored letters. For instance, “Thank You” could be displayed in green when the transaction was successful, “Low Balance” could be displayed in yellow (notice how it can be fully spelled out with this solution), and “Call FastLane” could also be displayed in yellow. With this solution, the two yellow messages would not cause confusion because they are not associated with a common metaphor. There would not be anything in red for the same reason that there isn’t a red light on the current FastLane traffic lights — red would most likely be interpreted as “stop” and that is counter-productive to the service FastLane provides.
Maybe some day FastLane will realize the problem with what they have and will fix it. In the meantime, we just have to pay close attention to which yellow light we get.
