I got my MnPASS transponder on Tuesday. I had my first opportunity to use it today on my drive into work. I hopped on the “sane-lane” at highway 100 into downtown. It only cost $0.25 so I figured I would just give it a try.

When passing under the sensor the transponder in my car beeped four times to indicate it had been recognized and I zipped on into work. I was curious to see how fast the system was so I logged onto the website when I got into work and was pretty impressed to see that my account had already been debited the appropriate amount. Very nice!

One thing I’m curious about is that the terms of use that you sign up for say they will share information with the highway patrol and they have individual timing for each car. Since they track each individual car through the lanes they can easily derive your average speed and I’ve heard of other states using toll systems and handing out speeding tickets to people based on the time in and out of the toll lanes.

All in all, it seems like a really nice system and I like how it’s being implemented.