Between Two Realms

Fellow Malaysian drivers (motorcyclist not included), does the following scenarios sound familiar to you?

The SmartTAG Experience
You heard that you could enjoy a drive through convenience while paying tolls, so you purchased a SmartTAG vehicle on-board unit, along with a Touch ‘n Go contactless smartcard to supply the on-board unit with electronic cash, and happily drive off in your vehicle, now equipped with greater convenience because you were told that vehicle throughput via a SmartTAG lane is 4 times faster than the cash lane.

The Touch n’ Go Smartcard and the SmartTAG On-board Device (seen here fully equipped with a smart card)
Source: Touch n’ Go

1. You approach a road toll plaza, drive towards the designated lane for SmartTAG but you remembered that you are recommended to only go as fast as 40km/h because the system can detect a vehicle as fast as 40 milliseconds, so you slowed down, and you are grateful that you car’s windows are not tainted, else you would have need to slowed down to 20km/h, you thought “Well, I think this is fine as long as I do not need to stop to pay the toll”.
2. At the next road toll plaza, you intend to repeat what you have done before, however, you realize that there is only 1 single SmartTAG lane out of the 10 lanes available, and it seems that the queue is slightly longer than it should be, you thought “OK lah, still slightly faster, not everyone realize the convenience of SmartTAG, I guess”.
3. As it is about to be your turn to drive through, the vehicle in front of you suddenly stops at the detection area of the lane and hence you are forced to stop too. You observe that the lane gate is not open, and siren lights started flashing with accompanying alarm sounds. Apparently, there are some problems with the SmartTAG system, but you are uncertain whether it was the vehicle’s on-board unit or SmartTAG lane that causes the standstill. You waited for 5 minutes for the toll plaza crew to arrive at the driver’s aid, and another 10 minutes for the problem to be cleared, for you are unable to reverse, or transfer to any other lanes due to obstructions from road dividers and vehicles queueing from behind. You thought “Glitches happens once in a while, forgivable”.
4. You arrive at your destination, park your vehicle and proceed to run some errands. Upon returning to your car, you discovered that your vehicle’s windscreen is smashed, and that your new SmartTAG on-board device and Touch n’ Go smartcard pre-loaded with RM100 is gone! Someone sabotaged your car with the sole intention of stealing the system! You could not do anything as you the on-board device cannot be traced to you, and you are not able to disable the value-loaded smartcard.
5. You replace your windscreen, and purchase another set of SmartTAG on-board device and Touch ‘n Go smartcard. This time around, you have learned your lesson. You keep the on-board device and smartcard in your glove box, beyond the vision of bystanders when you are out of your vehicle and only place it on the dashboard only when you are driving, so that no one would smash your windscreen again, just because they sight an opportunity for theft.

The Touch n’ Go Experience
Due to recurring incidents of 1, 2 and 3 above over and over again, many times, to yourself, you decide that to put away the on-board device, and rely solely on the Touch n’ Go smartcard instead. Despite having to stop to pay in the manner that the name of the smartcard suggests, at least it would still be faster than the cash lane, as you have observed that there were certainly more Touch n’ Go lanes than SmartTAG lanes at most road toll plazas.

1. You approach yet another road toll plaza and you take out your card to pay for the toll, the lane’s display tells you that you have insufficient cash value in your card, and refuses you from passing through. You painstakingly reverse your car while enduring mad drivers from behind honking and cursing at you, and proceed to the cash lane instead.
2. You were told that you may avoid incident 1 above again by enabling an auto-reload mechanism via credit card. However, you are only limited to selecting from a few participating banks’ offerings. For the sake of convenience, you took it all the way to enabling the said auto-reload mechanism.
3. So far so good, you approach yet another road toll plaza while driving, due to the limited number of Touch n’ Go lanes that are actually open, you are forced to queue up once again. By your turn, you made the payment, but the toll gate refuses from passing through, possibly due to yet another glitch.

The Cash Experience
Frustrated, you decide to give up with the Touch n’ Go smartcard, and again reverse through the crowd of honking and cursing drivers on the busy road toll plaza, and approach the cash lane

1. You have no small denominations of cash, and you are forced to pay with a slightly bigger denomination, but the toll operator says he/she has no change available for that amount!
2. Amidst the honking and cursing of the drivers queueing behind (again), you ransack through your pathetic change box in your vehicle and found just sufficient change to pay for the toll. Due to a manual system, you are forced to wait for an extra couple of minutes before you are allowed to drive through.
3. Weeks later, you learn that fuel price and certain road tolls are to be increased, and you are asked to change your current lifestyle in order to adapt to the price hikes… (but that, is a different story altogether)

Seems like things got slightly out of hand with such a long entry. Nevertheless, do let me know of your experiences, fellow drivers of Malaysia. I shall reveal the purpose of the long story above soon in Part 2…