TRAVEL

By Vinod Sreeharsha

After more than three years in exile, SunPass is returning to Miami International Airport. The parking payment system will be back in service at the airport sometime later this year. It won’t replace QuickPay now used in the Dolphin and Flamingo garages, but will provide travelers driving to and from Florida’s second busiest airport with an additional option. The prepaid electronic toll system used on highways in much of the state allows travelers returning to MIA to go straight to their cars and exit the garage. Miami International said it stopped using SunPass after numerous malfunctions.

“The Miami-Dade Aviation Department will reinstall the SunPass system at MIA’s public parking garages at the latest by year end, if not sooner,” Ralph Cutié, director and chief executive officer of the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, wrote in a March 12 email.

Why a Miami airport user didn’t like the parking change

A Miami Herald subscriber first learned of the change. After a Dec. 13 Herald report on planned renovations at the airport, Daniel Westbrook wrote to Cutié to express dissatisfaction over QuickPay. He also copied Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “I feel that the new system is less convenient, less safe, and more costly than the old SunPass system,” Westbrook wrote on Feb. 25. He sent a copy to the Herald. In the letter, he lamented that travelers have “to keep track of an entry stub during their travel,” and then when returning “engage in a variety of steps involving their ticket and a credit/debit card” and “walk to their car from an unfamiliar starting point.” Some of those requirements made him feel less safe, he said.

“With SunPass, parkers would just drive in and drive out with the transponder taking care of everything,” he said of the automatic system that raises the garage gate to exit. Cutié then responded to Westbrook: “We understand your concerns and the issues described in your email” and “we also acknowledge that the SunPass system offers customers several significant benefits,” MIA’s chief wrote him.

Why MIA stopped using SunPass

At the start of 2022, Miami International Airport stopped accepting SunPass, the only remote payment option it had at the time.

A year earlier, as MIA was preparing to do a tech upgrade with parking vendor Designa for the Dolphin and Flamingo garages, the airport found SunPass to be unreliable. “Since the State of Florida’s SunPass vendor began processing tolls in 2018, the system has been unable to efficiently process the millions of daily toll transactions statewide and has had frequent system-wide outages, leading to significant garage exit delays at MIA and inconveniencing thousands of travelers,” according to an MIA statement reported by the Herald. “The vendor has also experienced frequent billing issues, leading to overbilling of users.”

MIA said at that time that delayed charges and outages that cost the state about $50 million in lost parking revenue. The problems continued into 2021. At that time, the airport provided data to the Miami Herald documenting 10 SunPass outages between May and August of that year. One lasted nearly 11 hours. In addition to addressing the deficiencies, airport officials wanted to provide a more “user-friendly alternative,” Jimmy Morales, Miami-Dade County’s chief operating officer, wrote in a 2021 memo. That meant bringing in a system with 16 kiosks inside the garages that accepted credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Wallet. “As part of MIA’s transition to an improved parking payment system, access to the airport’s parking garages with SunPass will no longer be available beginning January 1, 2022,” MIA said in a Dec. 27, 2021 statement. “Customers will soon be able to pay for parking inside the garage instead of the collection plaza when they exit.”

Three years later, it turns out not all travelers have liked that.

New adjustments

“The new system seems less safe, requiring getting out a wallet or purse in public and also having to find a pay station and from there, the car,” Westbrook wrote in his email. Cutié said in an interview with the Miami Herald on March 19 that MIA has long wanted to bring back SunPass. But it was waiting for the system to work out all of its kinks. Now, all past problems have been fixed, he said.

“The issues have been resolved,” he said. The retired Westbrook, who uses MIA 10 to 15 times a each year, told the Herald on March 17, “I’m glad to hear they’re going back to it.” But he mentioned another issue he raised in his original email complaint: In 2022, parking fees went up by 47% from daily $17 to $25 per day. “How can this be justified?’ MIA officials say they have no plans to reduce rates. They said the justification was that before 2022, prices stayed steady since 2011. And the $25 rate is similar to other large airports.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/living/travel/article302427199.html