Your E-ZPass Is Changing – Here’s What Berkshire County Drivers Need to Know

If you drive the Mass Pike or through any of Boston's tunnels, you've probably got an E-ZPass stuck to your windshield. But starting this month, the plastic rectangle is officially on its way out.

Massachusetts has begun phasing in a new E-ZPass, and it's just a sticker. MassDOT recently stopped handing out the old hard-plastic transponders to new customers, replacing them with small adhesive tags that work exactly the same way.

The sticker has an embedded RFID chip that's read by the overhead toll gantries as you pass under them. No difference in function, just a lot cheaper to produce. The old units cost the state $6.70 each. The new stickers? Fifty-five cents. Officials say that adds up to more than $7 million in annual savings.

If you already have a plastic transponder, don't sweat it. You don't have to do a thing, your existing device keeps working. The stickers will go to new customers and anyone who needs a replacement going forward. And here's a bonus: replacement stickers will now be free, compared to the $20 fee previously charged for a lost or broken transponder. -wbur.org

Do you actually need one? Nobody's required to get an E-ZPass, but if you drive Massachusetts toll roads regularly, not having one is essentially choosing to pay more. E-ZPass holders pay significantly lower toll rates than drivers billed through the Pay By Plate system. A full Mass Pike crossing can run around $7.50 with E-ZPass versus $14 without one, nearly double.

E-ZPass has been around since 1993, when it first launched on the New York State Thruway, it was previously "Fast Lane" in the Commonwealth. Massachusetts was actually one of the later holdouts on switching to sticker technology, several other states in the E-ZPass network had already made the move years ago.