The condition of truth in the New Year.

As of Jan. 1, 2012, the Illinois Tollway has demanded a 35 cent I-PASS increase. Fares will range from 75 cents to $3.90, 87 percent higher than the rate commuters have been paying for the last 29 years.

Professor Manzoor from the College of Education said she was “surprised” when at the beginning of December, just one month before the fee was implemented, a large banner warned commuters of the upcoming fee hikes.

Professor Manzoor has decided to avoid the Tollway altogether. Coming from North Lombard she used to pass through six to 10 tollbooths, but she will now opt for a longer, tollbooth-free commute. Although the extra commute will cost her more time, it will mean over a thousand dollars saved over the course of a year.

According to the Illinois Tollway committee, concerns like Professor Manzoor’s are too little too late. The Illinois Tollway Board conducted 15 listening sessions around Northern Illinois and considered countless letters, emails and website submissions. Their diligent work resulted in an 85.5 percent positive response with 9.5 percent opposed.

But in a city notoriously known for refusing to agree on one baseball team or often snidely refuting to acknowledge the former Sears Tower by anything other than it’s rightful name, it is hard to see how the Tollway Board’s diligent efforts truly persuaded the commuters of a stubborn city like Chicago to quietly agree to a hefty pay increase.

But the Illinois Tollway claims it is for our own good.

According to the Illinois Tollway, the reconstruction project titled “Move Illinois: The Illinois Tollway Driving the Future” has plans to “improve mobility, relieve congestion, reduce pollution, create 120,000 jobs and link economies across the Midwest region.” This massive project is expected to improve Tri-state tollway (I-94, I-294, I-80), Veterans Memorial Tollway (I-355), Reagan Memorial Tollway (I-88) and a $2.4 billion portion of the Jane Adams memorial Tollway (I-90).

The only problem is, it will take 15 years and cost commuters about $12 billion in total. More than triple the cost of a 2005 project just now coming to a close $3.6 billion later.

Although students are not strangers to a hopeless job market and meager promises of a better future, it’s hard to swallow this costly change on an empty wallet.

Arthur Wawrzyczek, 20, says he understands the need for extra funding for the 12 billion road expansion which would “add a few jobs and make the road easier to drive,” but he wishes that the Illinois Tollway would have found alternative funding over the “financially-not-so-well-off drivers on the road.”

Although the Illinois Tollway ranks 29 among all 41 toll road agencies in the U.S. in terms of price, the Capitol Plan offered by the Illinois Tollway clearly specifies that a promise has been broken by implementing the fee hike.

In 1953 when the Illinois Tollway was created, the state legislature stipulated that the toll roads would become freeways once the original bonds where payed off.

In the end, the fees never stopped. Like a guest who had far overstayed his welcome, the Illinois Tollway continued to acquire more loans and, in return, collect more fees from its compliant hosts.

In 2004, the union was made official and a press release was issued. The Illinois Tollway stated that the promise was “well-intentioned but short-sighted,” and not considerate of the maintenance needed to answer to future demands.

Alexa Gianaris, 22, says she does not want to pay for the mistakes the Illinois Tollway has made on her daily commute to and from DePaul University.

“They are telling us crap, and I don’t want to deal with it,” she said.