CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Wednesday is the last day the state will sell highway tokens that give drivers a 50 percent discount at toll plazas, marking another milestone in the transition to the E-ZPass toll collection system.

The tokens will be accepted through the end of the year, but after that drivers must use E-ZPass or pay full tolls in cash.

The state also has cleared a backlog of orders for E-ZPass transponders, Department of Transportation spokesman Bill Boynton said Tuesday. E-ZPass offers a 30 percent discount to private drivers and 10 percent to commercial truckers.

The state was overwhelmed with orders when the transponders first went on sale for $5 each, well below cost. The price rose to $24 earlier this month. Boynton said that as of Monday, the state had received 228,427 transponder orders.

Each time a car with a transponder passes through a toll plaza, the toll is deducted automatically from an account linked to the user’s credit card.

E-ZPass is now accepted at all the state’s tollbooths, Boynton said. Only one or two lanes in the middle of each toll plaza are exclusively for E-ZPass use, while other lanes to the right accept both E-ZPass and other methods of payment.

That has led to some complaints, but as more drivers use E-ZPass, more lanes will be devoted exclusively to drivers who have transponders, Boynton said.

“You have to get a certain amount of market penetration, because every time you take a lane away from everybody else, you get bigger lines in the other lanes,” he said. “Of course when people get E-ZPass, they want everyone else to get out of the way.”

At the Bedford toll plaza and ramps on the Everett Turnpike, more than 30 percent of drivers are now using E-ZPass, he said. About 23 percent use it in Dover and Rochester on the Spaulding Turnpike, the last toll plazas to open E-ZPass lanes.

The system also will smooth out when the state’s turnpike system goes from four methods of payment to two, he said. The state will end customer charge accounts for commercial truckers on Sept. 30 and stop accepting tokens from private drivers on Dec. 31.

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