BEREA, Ohio — Two days before last week’s deadly turnpike crashes, Ferzan Ahmed, the Ohio Turnpike Commission’s executive director, leaned forward in a chair in a conference room inside the turnpike’s Berea headquarters.
Occasionally, he thumped his hand against the table or his chest.
“Obviously our customers are unhappy. I get that and it bothers me,” Ahmed said.
For more than four months now, many customers have been angered by the turnpike’s new open tolling system. In northwest Ohio, new toll plazas opened at exit 49 – eastbound and westbound. Eastbound, customers without an E-ZPass must pull through the plaza and grab a ticket. On the other side, a driver must pay a toll.
In late July, 11 Investigates reported that 257,000 drivers either missed the plazas or their E-ZPasses were not detected in the 70 days after the system went live on April 10. As a result, many of those drivers received an unexpected invoice in the mail. Some of the bills were for the max fare of $19.25. When some of those invoices went unpaid, an additional late fee was added on.
Partly as a result of that story, the turnpike has suspended late fees and will not turn any accounts over to collections.
“If you get a max fare invoice, and it should not be, don’t pay it out of frustration,” Ahmed said. “And don’t worry, it’s not going to go to collections. More fees are not going to be added. If we can’t get back to you in a week, we’ll get back to you in two weeks. If we don’t get back to you in two weeks, we’ll get back to you in three weeks, but we are going to take care of every customer who feels the invoice is not right. We will take care of them.”
After our initial story aired, hundreds of people commented on our social media, emailed or phoned. A second story told some of those stories and they were remarkably similar – "I was confused," "I couldn’t get through to customer service," and "the plaza is unsafe because of driver confusion."
Though there are multiple signs posted miles before the new toll plaza, a man interviewed by 11 Investigates for an early August story told us he was in the left lane when he noticed the plaza and did not want to cut across multiple lanes to reach it.
Ahmed watched that story: “Bravo. You did the right thing, sir. I don’t want you to go across three lanes like that because that’s unsafe.”
His words took on even greater meaning two days after our interview. In the early morning hours of Thursday, Aug. 15, a Toyota Highlander with a family from Minneapolis traveling eastbound was struck from behind by a commercial vehicle.
At an NTSB briefing last week, an investigator said the Highlander slowed unexpectedly and was hit by the semi. The vehicle was hit just before the exit ramp for the new turnpike plaza. The Highlander was pushed into a ditch to the right of the highway. The semi also veered right, hit a concrete barrier in the ramp area and flipped on its side, dumping sulphuric acid. The father and a child were killed in the vehicle, while two other passengers were injured. The semi driver was seriously injured.
Miles behind that accident, semis collided and a vehicle slid into them, killing a person in the vehicle. Close to an hour later, a commercial vehicle traveling westbound slammed into stopped traffic, killing one person. 24-year-old Istam Naimov, of Philadelphia, was arrested by the Ohio State Highway Patrol at approximately 6:30 a.m. He faces multiple charges.
Multiple people told 11 Investigates that they believe the initial crash could be related to confusion about the new plaza, but no cause has been determined. Dozens of National Transportation Safety Board agents immediately descended on the area. The preliminary NTSB report is expected in about four weeks. A final report will not be released for a year. That final report is likely to include various safety recommendations – for vehicles and for the roadway.
It has already been an unusually deadly year for the turnpike. Even though we are not yet to the end of August, there have been 16 fatalities. It is one more than all of last year. It has been 20 years since the turnpike has seen 17 deaths. It has been 30 years since there have been at least 19 deaths.
Ahmed and customer service manager Amanda Ginley agreed to sit down with 11 Investigates early last week. This interview was two days before the deadly crashes. The hourlong interviews addressed customer concerns with the new tolling system, specifically unexpected invoices and long wait times to get through to customer service.
“It did catch us by surprise. We really did a lot of research. We worked with our consultants to try to come up with projections on who we thought would be calling us. Originally, we projected that we would only need 18 representatives to handle the call volume,” Ginley said. “After our go-live date, we determined that number was not sufficient.”
During the interview, Ahmed said four additional representatives would be added. At Monday’s turnpike board meeting, it was announced that a temp agency would also be used until call volume falls to an acceptable level.
He told us he expects it to take about 60 days to bring the call volume down to an acceptable level and to educate drivers.
11 Investigates tried multiple times to reach a customer service representative last week and we were disconnected because of high call volume. However, on Tuesday afternoon, we were put on hold until a representative answered after 18 minutes.
“I’m very proud to tell you that whereas our customers, unfortunately, have had to wait a very long period of time on the phone, and may have to call back again and again, not a single customer has said that once they reached us their experience was anything but pleasant,” Ahmed said. “We are very happy about that, but now we need to do something so that our customers don’t have to wait for hours to reach us. That’s not right.”
The good news for customers is that representatives are spending a good deal of time on the phone, trying to adjust fares or explain the new system. In the month of July, representatives spent an average of 7:23 talking with callers. By comparison, last July, before the unexpected invoices began to arrive, an average call lasted an average of 4:29.
In addition, 17,500 invoices were adjusted between April 10 and Aug. 10.
As far as confusion about the new plaza, progress has been slow. New numbers through Aug. 10 show that 440,000 drivers either missed the plaza or did not have their E-ZPass detected in the first four months.
“We underestimated the number of customers who would not understand that system. I take that. I’m the director. The buck stops with me,” Ahmed said. “I approve all the plans, I approve press releases, I approve plans for social media. Well, I’ve learned a lesson. If we ever have to do this again, perhaps we’ll hire a marketing company, a media company to launch an aggressive media campaign six months ahead of time.”