One of the adjustments to moving from the Texas Panhandle to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex involves my motor vehicles.

And I don’t mean the traffic.

I’m talkin’ about toll roads. They’re all over the place.

We live just a stone’s throw from the Sam Rayburn Tollway. We’ve got the North Dallas Tollway. There’s the President George Bush Turnpike about eight miles or so south of us. I know I’m missing a bunch of them. But you get the drift.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t object to the toll roads. They’re necessary for paying for the wear and tear we motorists inflict on our highways.

What’s especially non-objectionable is the way the North Texas Tollway Authority assesses these tolls. The NTTA deploys cameras along the highways. You pass under them, the cameras snap a picture of your license plate and then the NTTA sends you a bill. I just paid a bill for $8.08, which was the fee we paid for driving along the Rayburn toll road en route to a furniture store in The Colony, and then back to our new digs in Fairview. Not bad.

Moreover, it beats the dickens out of the way some states assess tolls. Take Oklahoma, for instance. Not many years ago, about four years or so, my wife and I found ourselves on a toll road north of Oklahoma City. We had to fumble around for the correct change as we motored along the highway and approached a toll booth.

Ridiculous, I’m tellin’ ya!

The NTTA does it right. I appreciate the absence of the need to be carrying cash with me as I try to get from place to place. I’ve still got to learn my way around without the hassle of fumbling for cash.

Come to think of it, the technology the NTTA uses to assess toll fees reminds me of the red-light cameras that cities such as, say, Amarillo use to nab traffic violators who just cannot obey traffic signals’ instructions to stop when the light turns red.