Reload your SunPass account. Highway tolls are returning

Florida residents will no longer get a free pass traversing most stretches of Florida’s Turnpike or certain local expressways across the state.

The Florida Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that starting at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, tolls on a vast majority of Florida’s Turnpike system, all state roads and bridges, and all regional toll facilities will be reinstated.

There is one exception. The Homestead extension of Florida’s Turnpike south of the interchange with State Road 874 (mile markers 0-17) will remain suspended to assist Monroe County residents with recovery efforts.

Tolls statewide had been suspended for two weeks — since Sept. 5 — to allow residents to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Irma and return afterward.

They were to remain suspended “for the duration of the storm’s impacts to Florida” to allow for “immediate recovery efforts” to continue, the governor’s office had said.

It’s unclear how much revenue Florida’s Turnpike, MDX or other regional governing boards of Florida toll roads may have lost — money that Florida drivers, in turn, saved — in the 15 days so far that tolls will have been suspended because of Irma.

This story was originally published September 19, 2017 at 11:48 AM with the headline "Reload your SunPass account. Highway tolls are returning."