You should get a spare EZ Pass for use in rental cars - all you have to do is carry it with you on trips and hold it up above the dashboard as you pass through the EZ Pass booth.

I don't think I've ever taken this toll road of which you all speak.

Yep, it's very easy. It's maybe a mile east on Beltway 8 to get to the airport exit. You'll also skip the tollbooth on the Hardy Airport Connector.

The Hardy is a very convenient way to get to either Downtown or The Woodlands from IAH. Aside from Rush-Hour, there's hardly ever any traffic.

That used to work, but not anymore. HCTRA no longer issues the old, plastic box style tags that they used to have. With those you could just hold it up against the windshield and it would read. The current tags are thin, small things that adhere to the windshield, and they won't work if they're not adhered to the windshield. The old tags were recalled almost two years ago and destroyed, and if you still have one that wasn't returned, it's long since been deactivated.

In the spirit of wondering about facials, I wonder if one can enter the Drew Freeway from Hardy. (Sorry, it was there. Someone had to do it.)

Rental-Car Agencies in Houston now offer EZ-Tag as an Option (like GPS). ^

So, it's not the same EZ Pass we have on the East Coast?

It's a scenic ride through some of Houston's least desirable neighborhoods, with railroad tracks running down the middle of the tollway for much of the way.

The nice thing is that it's never congested, and as long as you watch out for the occassional cop, you can set your cruise control on about 75-80 and it's smooth, nonstop sailing along an almost perfectly straight and flat roadway from the airport area to just north of Downtown in about 10 minutes.

I think I've always taken I-45 and Beltway 8 during non-rush hour periods. How much is the toll to go from downtown to the airport?

Nope.

But the tags issued by any of the tollway authorities in Texas do work all over the state of Texas.

I believe there are two toll-booths en route to Downtown from IAH. The one nearest the airport is $1.00, IIRC, and the other is $1.50. Once the Hardy merges into the 610 Loop, you can get into town via US-59, or you can continue on Hardy Street through some very intriguing neighborhoods, which deposits you into the city near the Jail/Criminal Courts/Baseball Stadium.

With the entrance and the booths I think it's $2.50

If there's an accident or something on 45 in the morning the Hardy gets backed up very quickly.

I have my old NTTA toll-tag from Dallas (all toll-tags in Texas work in all Texas cities) and it's the velcro kind. Houston has the new sticky ones and so does TxTag.

Y'all, as well as Florida and California, need to get with the program so you can be added to the EZ-Pass states.

Some are, but not all. Only Avis, Budget, and Hertz are offering this option.

Speaking of rental cars and tollway tags, there's a HUGE racket going on in Dallas. The North Texas Turnpike Authority is in the process of moving to an all electronic system, much like the Westpark Tollway is in Houston. This will involve removing the existing cash collection lanes on the Dallas North, Bush, and Addison Airport Tunnel tollways in 2010. This system is already in place on State Highway 121. Unlike HCTRA in Houston, driving on the electronic collection only tollways in Dallas without a tag doesn't incur a violation with a hefty fine; they just mail you a bill for the toll with a processing fee. It's not a true violation like it is in Houston, and the processing fee is pretty small; it's like a difference of $0.75 between the tag rate and the cash by mail rate. However, if you drive a rental car from DAL or DFW on those tollways and hit an tag-only toll collection, the rental car company will send you a notice months later that they have provided your name and address to the NTTA to collect the toll, and have charged your credit card a "convenience fee" for doing this. That fee is often at least $10-15, but varies by rental car agency. We ran into this with National at DFW in June. In September three bills arrived in our mailbox from National for $15 each, due to three non-cash tollbooths we hit on 121 in June. The total tolls were less than $2, and National charged us $45 for it.

No verbal warnings were issued when we rented the car, and there are no signs at the exit gate on the rental lot warning you of this either. I was told "there's signs at the rental counter" but that does no good when you're an Emerald Club member and don't ever go to the counter. :rolleyes: Anyway, if you rent a car in Dallas, consider yourself warned. This is a major cash grab going on by the rental car agencies up there. I wouldn't be surprised if there's not a class action lawsuit at some point regarding this issue.