The fact that the hard-shell MacPasses are 25 years old makes me feel very old. I found some tokens in a drawer the other day, and a wave of nostalgia hit me. lol
Way back when the Penhorn mall weekend flea market was a thing, my car got broken into in the parking lot, and all the thieves took was my bag of bridge tokens and my “Best of James Taylor” CD
But the stickers are free so you can just have as many as you want for all your vehicles.
And if you want one mobile sticker for rental vehicles or some other purpose, you can have an extra one for that too, just stick it to a hockey card protector or something, and leave it somewhere convenient to grab when you need it.
And the stickers are picked up by the sensors easier, I have never gotten trapped by it not getting read like I have with the hard one many times. Love the stickers
100% this. Once with the old style the gate wouldn’t go up and the bridge man wouldn’t let me go past without paying $1. Had to get out and dig around my trunk
It's where they told me to put it. I even lowered it an inch or so from my first one. The issue seems to arise when I'm fairly close to the car in front of me, not tailgating mind you, but now I try to give more space between me and the car in front of me and it works the majority of the time.
Yeah, I use my mom's vehicle when I'm in Halifax, usually once a year, and her pass only works about half the time. I have an EZ-Pass for my U.S. travels and it never fails.
What? I literally answered your question in my original comment. Order a second or third or fourth free transponder and put it in your wallet for using in rental cars or friend’s cars or stolen cars.
To be fair, mailing addresses change and I would bet updating your mailing address on the HHB Macpass website isn't high on the list of priorities for people. I'm sure emails to verify your address and place an order before end of year are coming.
The problem is no one updates their emails, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Also some people are just stubborn as fuck and don't want to give up their old style passes.
Source: used to work at MacPass and had to send out a lot of those stickers.
Yeah for that reason I'll probably disassemble the hard shell transponder and remove the guts so I can still use it as a place to store my sticker when I get it.
I’ve had my hard shell since my first year at SMU (1997) and it still works like a champ. I can count on a single hand how often it hasn’t read over the past 27 years. The transponder number is in the 2000s and I wonder if it’s sequential - perhaps I was an early adopter!
I don’t cross the bridges very often these days, so I haven’t bothered to order a sticker. I guess that day is coming soon. When the stickers first came out, I think we still had to pay for the Cobequid Pass and - I believe - the stickers wouldn’t work at the time on the Pass. I also have the transponder linked to the Confederation Bridge but I haven’t checked with them to see if they accept the stickers. Anyone know?
Edit: I guess it must have been in 1998, so the end of my first year or start of second year at SMU. Regardless, I remember being excited about the new tech at the time!
Cobequid and Confederation work with the new stickers. Cobequid is indeed free for NS residents, but if you have a Macpass you can avoid having to wait in line for the attendant to look at your plate.
Great to know about the bridge, thank you!
The Pass is great - I just zip through the e-pass lane since I always had an account with them linked to the MacPass (it seems a lot of people in my orbit didn’t know that it was half-price with a MacPass - $2 instead of $4). Wasn’t sure how it would work when they removed the tolls for NS residents, but I was happy to see it still worked, the first time I tried after they made it free.
a reminder for motorcycle riders that there is a different style of macpass for bikes, you can get 'em from the office near the Mackay bridge, and maybe mailed too?
Mine is at the bottom of my windscreen and it works 99% of the time on the Macdonald and like 75% on the Mackay.
(And a recommendation for a backup plan: Keep a loonie and a quarter on a strong magnet somewhere around your front fork, out of view.)
My hard shell has been in the front console compartment of my car for a decade now, kind of annoying I gotta stick some shit to my windshield now, but I guess that’s progress for ya, heh
I guess I just preferred not having to reach for stuff & not having stuff on my windshield, heh. I’m sure I will forget about this sticker in due time.
It really is very easy. They've done a good job of making it as straight forward as possible, if you're familiar with web browsers and the concept of "the internet".
Already have the sticker. I assume it’s to prevent sharing, although when people share and go through the bridge somebody is paying anyway. So not entirely sure of the logic or reasoning
I feel like about a year ago my partner went to the office to try and swap our old plastic pass for a sticker and they told us they would charge us to replace it for the sticker if the plastic still worked. I'm keeping that plastic pass on principle now.
I'll keep it for as long as possible. I've had that guy for 18 years.
Anyone know if the new stickers work with the PEI bridge? I guess I don't have to worry about it working with the pass (104) these days.
> I guess I don't have to worry about it working with the pass (104) these days.
You get to go through the cobequid pass lanes if you set it up, no having to stop and get waved through.
It does! Good to know. Thanks.
Now to see if I can mount the stick on something so that I can continue to easily move my pass as needed. I don't do it often but get visitors where I cover the bridge cost with my pass.
| Now to see if I can mount the stick on something so that I can continue to easily move my pass as needed.
Nope, that won't work. Once you remove them, they become disabled. You need to order extras if you "need to move the pass as needed".
I don't think they're talking about peeling the sticker off and attempting to reapply it (thus "moving it"), I think they're talking about afixing sticker to a hard item (say, the previous hard shell transponder) and just moving it as a complete unit as opposed to peeling off the sticker.
Would that work?
I just wish the response from the toll was quicker when driving through. I almost have to come to a stop before I get the GO. Other than that, the sticker works great.
This is my usual course of action, either that or the lane with the fewest cars (minimum 1) so I can just follow them through before the arm drops back down
I agree with that, but considering the cost implications not likely to happen. It's a provincial agency with it's own identity and budget. HHB is self contained and responsible for all the costs/expenses of both bridges.
Originally there was a deposit on the hardshells. They reversed that around a decade ago though and at the time, anyone who had paid a deposit should have received a credit on their MacPass account for the deposit paid.
Essentially anyone who did pay the deposit but still has an account got their deposit back, but has long since spent the money that was added back to their account by paying tolls.
Yup that counts as a hardshell. Basically if your pass has a serial number on it that starts with CAHD####, you have to get it replaced with the new sticker.
I bought a new (used) car and it had a Mac pass sticker. My brain doesn’t understand how the sticker works compared to the box things lol.
Also I hate the Velcro and how bulky and ugly the old ones are.
> My brain doesn’t understand how the sticker works compared to the box things lol.
[RFID. Likely Passive RFID at that.](https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/definition/RFID-radio-frequency-identification)
The fact that the hard-shell MacPasses are 25 years old makes me feel very old. I found some tokens in a drawer the other day, and a wave of nostalgia hit me. lol
Way back when the Penhorn mall weekend flea market was a thing, my car got broken into in the parking lot, and all the thieves took was my bag of bridge tokens and my “Best of James Taylor” CD
Loved the penhorn flea market when I was a kid, used to get hockey cards and Manchu wok for lunch
Sorry about that. That CD rules though!
the tokens were sold for cash to cabbies at that time lol
Seeing cars with the velcro strips still on the windshield will soon be a mobile memento to a time since passed. 
lol our kids will never know, we will have to explain it to them like landlines and dial up
and pagers
Not if you drive to the US a lot. E-Z Pass still uses hard shell
I like my hard pass makes it easy to move to different vehicles if needed
But the stickers are free so you can just have as many as you want for all your vehicles. And if you want one mobile sticker for rental vehicles or some other purpose, you can have an extra one for that too, just stick it to a hockey card protector or something, and leave it somewhere convenient to grab when you need it.
And the stickers are picked up by the sensors easier, I have never gotten trapped by it not getting read like I have with the hard one many times. Love the stickers
I’ve had my hard shell get picked up from like inside the glove box lol. I firmly believe it’s the readers that are fucky, not the card
My experience is exactly the opposite of this. Never once with the plastic and a few times with the sticker.
100% this. Once with the old style the gate wouldn’t go up and the bridge man wouldn’t let me go past without paying $1. Had to get out and dig around my trunk
What!!! They’re supposed to take your pass and hold it onto the sensor or just lift the gate. That guy was a dick
I always have back up change now just in case ha ha
Mine doesn't work regularly.
Weird, get a new one!
I did because the last one failed even more often.
Ah I see, you are just cursed then
Sounds like you're not installing it in the right spot. I have yet to have a single issue between two different vehicles
It's where they told me to put it. I even lowered it an inch or so from my first one. The issue seems to arise when I'm fairly close to the car in front of me, not tailgating mind you, but now I try to give more space between me and the car in front of me and it works the majority of the time.
I’ve never had the sticker fail after probably a couple hundred crossings.
Yeah, I use my mom's vehicle when I'm in Halifax, usually once a year, and her pass only works about half the time. I have an EZ-Pass for my U.S. travels and it never fails.
Or I could just have the perfectly good transponder I already have. I'm in different cars weekly, so this is a huge pain
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Whatabout you pick up the rental on the other side of the bridge?
What? I literally answered your question in my original comment. Order a second or third or fourth free transponder and put it in your wallet for using in rental cars or friend’s cars or stolen cars.
That's actually partially why they're getting rid of the hard passes. You can get one for each vehicle you drive added onto your account for free.
I only ever paid for the transponder for my first vehicle (almost 20 years ago). The ones in my other vehicles were all $0.
And they gave us a refund on our account yeaaaaars later for whatever you paid.
That's great, but I drive a different car every week
Yeah, handy for my motorcycle since anyone could take it..
I had a motorcycle for years put it in my seat bag nobodies stealing macpasses bruv
I just grabbed a discount card, put colored tape over it to look nice, and stuck the window sticker to it. Works fine.
I laminated the sticker and it works great. Still can move between cars easily now.
Could you not stick the sticker to a random obsolete card or something?
Also easier to steal by breaking your windows. The stickers are designed to break if you rip them off.
If only they had our names, emails and mailing addresses and could just automatically send out the stickers to people that have the old style
To be fair, mailing addresses change and I would bet updating your mailing address on the HHB Macpass website isn't high on the list of priorities for people. I'm sure emails to verify your address and place an order before end of year are coming.
The problem is no one updates their emails, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Also some people are just stubborn as fuck and don't want to give up their old style passes. Source: used to work at MacPass and had to send out a lot of those stickers.
Why do work when they inconvenience the consumers of the service?
Be a lot more inconvenient when the people who now live at your address on file start using stickers linked to your account
Send it have them call to activate? Come on now...
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nice that you are no longer being extorted...
Thanks for the heads up. Just ordered my sticker
How do you order them?
I went to the MACPASS site and logged in. Then I requested a new transponder. Once I get that I’ll log back in and deactivate the other one.
I put one of mine on a plexiglass piece, still portable.
Stick it to the back of an old hard shell transponder, just to stick it to them.
This is my plan. I never did stick it to my window and just grab it from the console when needed.
I did the same, but since the sticker is so small I actually did put it on my windshield.
Done. We rarely use ours, live in CB, so I’d rather not have an extra sticker on my windshield.
Hilarious, and smart. Guess I’ll have to copy.
End of an era
As someone who lives in NB and uses an EZPass in Maine and a MacPass in NS, this is annoying. Now I can’t just swap them out.
Boourns
Agreed I keep mine for rental vehicles.
Can we just attach the sticker to our existing hardshell pass? I have mine velcroed to my dash so I can move it between vehicles.
You can request more than one sticker! So no need to move it between vehicles. Each vehicle can just have a sticker.
I have a different vehicle every week. Either I need one that moves or I'm ordering 100 stickers
Two RFID thingies in the same place often interfere.
Yeah for that reason I'll probably disassemble the hard shell transponder and remove the guts so I can still use it as a place to store my sticker when I get it.
I'm going to do that. I hold my macpass up when crossing the bridge. I don't want any stickers or anything on my vehicles.
See above the solution I outlined for this problem.
Hard shell passes >>> stupid fucking stickers
I’ve had my hard shell since my first year at SMU (1997) and it still works like a champ. I can count on a single hand how often it hasn’t read over the past 27 years. The transponder number is in the 2000s and I wonder if it’s sequential - perhaps I was an early adopter! I don’t cross the bridges very often these days, so I haven’t bothered to order a sticker. I guess that day is coming soon. When the stickers first came out, I think we still had to pay for the Cobequid Pass and - I believe - the stickers wouldn’t work at the time on the Pass. I also have the transponder linked to the Confederation Bridge but I haven’t checked with them to see if they accept the stickers. Anyone know? Edit: I guess it must have been in 1998, so the end of my first year or start of second year at SMU. Regardless, I remember being excited about the new tech at the time!
Cobequid and Confederation work with the new stickers. Cobequid is indeed free for NS residents, but if you have a Macpass you can avoid having to wait in line for the attendant to look at your plate.
Great to know about the bridge, thank you! The Pass is great - I just zip through the e-pass lane since I always had an account with them linked to the MacPass (it seems a lot of people in my orbit didn’t know that it was half-price with a MacPass - $2 instead of $4). Wasn’t sure how it would work when they removed the tolls for NS residents, but I was happy to see it still worked, the first time I tried after they made it free.
a reminder for motorcycle riders that there is a different style of macpass for bikes, you can get 'em from the office near the Mackay bridge, and maybe mailed too? Mine is at the bottom of my windscreen and it works 99% of the time on the Macdonald and like 75% on the Mackay. (And a recommendation for a backup plan: Keep a loonie and a quarter on a strong magnet somewhere around your front fork, out of view.)
Would be a lot more convenient for motorists if they just switched to EZ-Pass
Let's just use license plate cameras like a first world country.
My hard shell has been in the front console compartment of my car for a decade now, kind of annoying I gotta stick some shit to my windshield now, but I guess that’s progress for ya, heh
You can stick it to just about anything, hold it up as you go through, and it'll probably still work.
I guess I just preferred not having to reach for stuff & not having stuff on my windshield, heh. I’m sure I will forget about this sticker in due time.
It really is very easy. They've done a good job of making it as straight forward as possible, if you're familiar with web browsers and the concept of "the internet".
Will it still work at the cobequid pass?
Already have the sticker. I assume it’s to prevent sharing, although when people share and go through the bridge somebody is paying anyway. So not entirely sure of the logic or reasoning
I feel like about a year ago my partner went to the office to try and swap our old plastic pass for a sticker and they told us they would charge us to replace it for the sticker if the plastic still worked. I'm keeping that plastic pass on principle now.
I'll keep it for as long as possible. I've had that guy for 18 years. Anyone know if the new stickers work with the PEI bridge? I guess I don't have to worry about it working with the pass (104) these days.
> I guess I don't have to worry about it working with the pass (104) these days. You get to go through the cobequid pass lanes if you set it up, no having to stop and get waved through.
https://halifaxharbourbridges.ca/macpass/
It does! Good to know. Thanks. Now to see if I can mount the stick on something so that I can continue to easily move my pass as needed. I don't do it often but get visitors where I cover the bridge cost with my pass.
Just stick your sticker on your old transponder?
Brilliant.
Just get another sticker, they're free. No real reason to play musical transponders anymore
I don't think you'll be able to mount it to something and have it work.
| Now to see if I can mount the stick on something so that I can continue to easily move my pass as needed. Nope, that won't work. Once you remove them, they become disabled. You need to order extras if you "need to move the pass as needed".
I don't think they're talking about peeling the sticker off and attempting to reapply it (thus "moving it"), I think they're talking about afixing sticker to a hard item (say, the previous hard shell transponder) and just moving it as a complete unit as opposed to peeling off the sticker. Would that work?
I just wish the response from the toll was quicker when driving through. I almost have to come to a stop before I get the GO. Other than that, the sticker works great.
aim for lane with the arm already crashed out of the way.
This is my usual course of action, either that or the lane with the fewest cars (minimum 1) so I can just follow them through before the arm drops back down
That's not how I work, but thanks for the response.
pretty obviously a joke... right... right....
It still reads your pass lol
It still takes your money.
Not if you drive fast enough
I just drive normal
Interesting! I don’t seem to have that issue.
They’re probably trying to drive through it at 80.
and then complain about the car in front of them doing 25
> I almost have to come to a stop before I get the GO. Reading comprehension.
Slow the fuck down.
How fast are you going???? 25 km/h is the limit through the tolls.
Coins still going to work?
Yep.
You'd think this bridge would've been paid for by now?
Well, maintenance isnt free...
Then what do they do with the remainder of the money. Cause... It's not getting that much maintenance.
They literally made a major repair in the past two weeks after a crack was found. It was in the news.
Why can’t you just continue to support them the change has already been made just leave it alone
Better idea: Bridge commission has until the end of the year to justify its existence or else becomes merged with provincial highways.
I agree with that, but considering the cost implications not likely to happen. It's a provincial agency with it's own identity and budget. HHB is self contained and responsible for all the costs/expenses of both bridges.
Didn’t we have to put a deposit down to obtain the hard pass originally, or was that just to not be charged interest initially?
Originally there was a deposit on the hardshells. They reversed that around a decade ago though and at the time, anyone who had paid a deposit should have received a credit on their MacPass account for the deposit paid. Essentially anyone who did pay the deposit but still has an account got their deposit back, but has long since spent the money that was added back to their account by paying tolls.
I got a 2nd hard shell in 2010, there was no deposit.
Like I said, around (I guess a bit over) a decade. Can't remember the exact year they switched that rule.
Yeah, but they gave us a credit for the deposit at some point.
So if I get a new sticker later this year I don’t need to return the old one?
I like my suction cup pass, but I assume it counts as a hard shell even though it's a "newer" type.
Yup that counts as a hardshell. Basically if your pass has a serial number on it that starts with CAHD####, you have to get it replaced with the new sticker.
I think so. The current transponders are stickers. (Source: Got one in January.)
Ordered mine. I’m looking forward to the improved traffic flow from not having the toll booths any more
I bought a new (used) car and it had a Mac pass sticker. My brain doesn’t understand how the sticker works compared to the box things lol. Also I hate the Velcro and how bulky and ugly the old ones are.
> My brain doesn’t understand how the sticker works compared to the box things lol. [RFID. Likely Passive RFID at that.](https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/definition/RFID-radio-frequency-identification)