How To Pay on the South Bay Expressway

If you’re about to visit the San Diego area and have no information about the tolls, you’ve landed on the right spot. Especially, if you want to drive through the South Bay Expressway, you will find a plethora of tolling options as you go along.  They are inclusive of making a payment with:

Cash

You can use your bills or the change to pay the toll. However, if you overpay, no change will be provided, so you won’t get the extra funds in return. 

Credit Card

If you have Visa, American Express, Mastercard or even the Discover card, you can pay through one of them. After all, the gift cards will also have one of the logo networks. 

South Bay Expressway Pay by Plate

In case you miss out on a certain toll, you can use the license number of your car and make a call to the management in San Diego. All you will have to do is pay an additional $2 for the missed toll.  Here, you will pay by plate and will have only less than 4 days to make up for such a payment. In case you fail to make the payment within 4 days after missing a toll, you might have to pay $40 or even $100 depending on how long you have extended the payment period.

South Bay Expressway Fastrak

This is the perfect option for those who use the South Bay Expressway route from California and San Diego. All you need to do is, open a new account and get the transponder that will put your windshield aside. This way, whenever you travel through a certain toll, the charges will automatically get deducted. This is also a cheaper method if you sift through the local roads very often. All you need to do is, download the form and install the application on your phone. Or, you can also download uproad on your phone to calculate the toll taxes in advance before leaving the house. 

For your information, the South Bay Expressway toll violations have already been reinstated since the government waived them in April due to the economic hardships caused by the global pandemic. Because the coronavirus took a big toll on several industries across the globe, it caused a sudden economic collapse that damaged many states. If you don’t know, the board of directors embraced last month reinstatement of vehicles for non-payment of the violations on time. Even the Fastrak monthly maintenance charges were suspended on the grounds of making people pay what they were supposed to. 

Now that the reinstatement has finally begun, there are a few temporary relief measures for everyone to know:

  • The fee of maintaining the Fastrack account will be eradicated for the ease of the travelers. 
  • The time frame for paying the fines of a violation has been extended to 10 days, which was 4 days before. 
  • The time frame to make a payment for the violation will lie between 30 to 60 days. 

According to the management of the board, the idea is to cut down the tolls by 100%. However, until the economy isn’t stabilized, it will be hard to say if the toll taxes will be reduced fully. Because COVID 19 has caused a major uproar in many parts of the globe, people are having a very hard time to make ends meet. Secondly, as far as the economies are concerned, toll taxes generate a lot of revenue for the government. Therefore, it is crucial for everyone to acknowledge the importance of this tax. 

Furthermore, the suspension of the South Bay Expressway toll violations will be dependent on how a person has been making the necessary payments in the past. When the reduction was earlier introduced before the pandemic, it led to a 31% decrease in the SR-125 revenue, which was the lowest ever recorded in history. However, as the pandemic gained momentum, the idea to completely wipe out the toll charges got shelved. Now the toll taxes have to be paid in order for the government to rest assured about generating enough revenue. On the other hand, the Expressway is around 10 miles on the stretch from the SR-125 that lies between Otay Mesa Road and State Route 54. For each of the stops, the tolls vary from 50 cents to over $3.50 each.