Gov. James McGreevey’s office said recently that New Jersey officials have fixed problems that had plagued the state’s E-ZPass electronic toll-collection system.

Many of the problems came to light last year. At one point, New Jersey shut down a large part of its electronic enforcement system intended to catch toll cheaters. The shutdown, in mid-December 2002, meant that at nearly 300 tollbooths on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike, nothing stopped people from beating tolls.

State officials had not been able to stop the automatic enforcement system from producing hundreds of thousands of false tickets, so they extended a moratorium on violations. Later that month, the equipment was fixed at some tollbooths and the system began to produce tickets again.

However, other problems also plagued the system. Customer service difficulties, including long waits for subscribers who called with concerns, prompted Delaware in early January 2003 to say it wanted out of its E-ZPass partnership with New Jersey.

The state took a number of steps to reverse the problems, including ending its relationship with some of the companies that were providing E-ZPass services and hiring new firms. It also change the way it paid those companies to encourage them to eliminate false tickets.

McGreevey’s office said in a statement July 12 that hundreds of thousands of false tickets had been cleared up, and that new customers were once again signing up for the electronic toll-payment system. The number of E-ZPass subscribers is up, false violations notices are down, the number of calls to the customer service line is up and wait times on that phone line are shorter.

Media outlets reported that the efforts have helped reverse the system’s declining financial fortunes. The New York Times, quoting McGreevey, reported that the state’s toll roads spent $30 million to collect $14 million in fines in 2001, a loss of $16 million. This year, the system expects to spend only $5 million to collect $7 million in fines.

“This system used to be a source of frustration for thousands of drivers,” the governor said in a statement. “Today it is doing what it was meant to do.”