ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Thousands of toll customers were potentially overcharged, according to a new report from the Maryland General Assembly's Office of Legislative Audits.
Auditors reviewed toll charges between April 2021 and January 2022.
The report largely focused on the Hatem Bridge, and its discount plan customers.
Under the discount plan, customers pay $20 annually for unlimited trips by a two-axle vehicle.
Over-billing is frequently linked to customers improperly mounting transponders in their vehicles.
In turn the toll camera will sometimes inadvertently bill the vehicle each time it passes a toll.
Auditors initially identified 11,488 customers who potentially were charged a combined $545,000 in overage fees.
The Maryland Transportation Authority found only $110,000 of that amount was improperly charged, according to the report.
Other tolls in the state were also overcharging customers, the report found.
Approximately 82,847 customers were potentially billed more than once for a single trip through a toll.
A majority (80 percent) occurred at the Intercounty Connector (ICC), the Maryland Bay Bridge, and Fort McHenry Tunnel.
To reach their conclusion, auditors sampled 65 customers, 62 of which they say were overcharged.
"For example, a customer traveling on the I-95 Express Toll Lanes was charged twice based on tolling equipment cameras in two lanes mistakenly reading the same vehicle twice and another customer was improperly charged twice for the same trip on the ICC," the report reads.
The report follows-up on a September 2021 legislative audit which found similar issues with the State's electronic tolling equipment.
MORE: Audit reveals Transportation Authority overcharged drivers for tolls during COVID-19 pandemic
Here is how the Maryland Transportation Authority responded at the time:
"During the audit period, MDTA processed an average of 158 million transactions per year. In a detailed analysis provided to OLA covering four specific days at two different facilities, MDTA identified 15 occurrences of customers being overcharged out of a total of 230,687 transactions. This reflects an error rate of 0.000098."
In response to this latest audit, the administration disagreed with most overcharges alleged in the report, but said all affected customers received return credits anyway.
As for the Hatem Bridge issue, MDTA said a lot of impacted customers were billed due to their account being inactive at the time. That policy has since changed and now only requires an active transponder.
There was also a three-week window (Dec. 24, 2020 - Jan. 15, 2021) in which overcharges spiked. MDTA says that was result of an equipment malfunction, that was later corrected.
One improvement auditors did highlight was MDTA's timeliness in posting toll transactions.
According to the report wait times have been reduced to 20-days compared with 279 days prior to April 2021.
