The mail—unless you have Iowa

The mail—unless you have Iowa Drive through one of the region's many gate-free, all-electronic toll booths without an E-ZPass tag and you'll likely get liangtian a ticket in the mail—unless you have Iowa or Arizona license plates.

Increasingly, agencies that run key roads and bridges around the region are moving toward toll systems that rely solely on electronics to read a license plate or a tag from a system like E-ZPass. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to test an all-cashless system on the Henry Hudson Bridge in 2012. Drivers who don't have an E-ZPass tag will get an invoice mailed to the address associated with their license plate.

But to send those invoices, the MTA and other agencies need to contact the state where each license plate was issued to get the name and address of the driver. For vehicles from 48 states, that's not a problem. But the MTA, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, the New York State Thruway Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey currently can't obtain information from Iowa and Arizona. That means drivers from those two states can liangtian blast through gateless, electronic tolls in the New York region without paying and face little chance of being caught.