The board of directors has approved a one dollar or 20% increase in the toll on the Golden Gate Bridge to go into effect September 1 making the new toll $6 for cars paying cash and $5 by transponder. The per axle rate for trucks is half the car rate. Tolls are levied only on the southbound direction of travel. Northbound is always free.
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North Texas Tollway Authority's (NTTA) board has approved a staff proposal that they raise posted speed limits at all their mainline toll plazas to full highway speeds - granting full recognition to open road tolling. At present posted speeds from half a mile (0.8km) before the mainline toll plazas are 45mph (72km/hr) except for one plaza (DNT MLP2) where the post is 40mph (64km/hr).
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Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has quietly sponsored legislation to allow the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to refinance on the state's security, making the state liable for the Turnpike's debt if it defaults. Normally the Turnpike Authority's borrowing is secured only by the net toll revenues of the Turnpike. They are called "non-recourse" loans because the bondholders have no recourse to the state if revenues are insufficient.
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July 1 they started selling sticker tags in Florida and collecting tolls with the tiny paper thin wonders - the IBM-developed eGo product supplied by TransCore and being marketed by Florida tollers as SunPass Mini. As of last Thursday we're told 15,500 have been sold, which by our calculation works out to 12,000/week. That matches almost exactly Florida Turnpike Enterprise' target of selling 600k in the first year (though any extrapolation from ten days data is a stretch.) 493 words  read more »

US transport secretary Mary Peters in an interview with Traffic World lambasts proposals for enlarging the present federal tax-&-grant programs, pitching the case for its replacement by direct pricing of roads. Excerpts from the interview follow:
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A security specialist is claiming he has "reverse engineered" the Title 21 read-only transponder used in California and Colorado, and says there are "gaping holes" in its security which he says make it vulnerable to "sniffing, cloning, and surreptitious tracking of the driver's comings and goings."
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Senate leaders are discussing with the Corzine administration a private toll concession to manage truck and bus lanes on the New Jersey Turnpike. Richard Cody, president of the senate and Raymond Lesniak chair of an economic committee are both reported by Joe Donahue in the Star-Ledger as saying they are looking at a partial toll concession - either for truck and bus lanes or for premium service lanes for cars.
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Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority board have voted to eliminate cash toll collection on their 183A toll road northwest of Austin by the end of 2008. The decision is expected to save the agency more than $1 million annually in operating costs.
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The example-de-jour among the Washington highway lobbyists is the "China model." The Chinese are spending big on highways and we need to too, is the gist of their message.
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The AP is reporting that Massachusetts state police are charging ten current and former toll collectors of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority with theft of tolls. A Suffolk District Attorney is quoted as saying that the charges are the result of a seven month long investigation. The toll collectors were taking anything between $20 and $150 per shift. 1129 words  read more »

The government of Puerto Rico has a major public-private partnership (P3) procurement under way for the island state's major toll road - PR22 - but investors are asking what it is: a real toll concession or just a longterm operations contract?
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Our report on the proposal for a tollroad between the Wiregrass region of southeast Alabama and I-10 in the Panhandle of Florida - we dubbed it the Wiregrass Turnpike - has been picked up by local critics based on a short comment at the end on the history of Not-For-Profit (NFP) tollroads. They are quoting TOLLROADSnews as saying it has been a disaster.

Ed Holman a Washington County FL commissioner is one who misinterpreted our comment.
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Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) lead spokesman Timothy Carson and finance professors supporting the Commission have said repeatedly that the Turnpike Commission can borrow at significantly lower interest rates than a private concessionaire. Carson was quoted in a press release April 21 as claiming that $245m of Act 44 bonds sold at especially good interest rates.
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Turnpike Commission supporters in the Pennsylvania legislature made an odd move Wednesday - introducing a measure which if passed would have instructed the Governor and state ("Commonwealth") officials to execute the Concession and Lease Agreement announced May 19th. The move was easily defeated by 185 to 12.

See a text nearby.
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In a further retreat before anti-road activists and a hostile legislature Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has abandoned Trans Texas Corridor 69, acknowledged there will be no significant toll financing, and abandoned consideration of any new routing. Only existing surface arterial roads will be upgraded.
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Mark IV is well positioned to win the E-ZPass recompete. Close analysis of the Request For Proposals (RFP) from the E-ZPass Inter Agency Group (IAG) indicates it will be difficult for competitors to put up competitive bids. Indeed implementing any new technology from the existing Mark IV transponders will be tough.
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The Indiana Toll Road Concession Company (ITRCC) has got a slew of bad press for offering politicians free i-Zoom transponders. i-Zoom is the local brandname for the transponders which are part of the interoperable E-ZPass system which now encompasses Illinois as well as that bunch of northeast and mid-Atlantic coast states.
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It's hard slogging for promoters of a spur tollroad off I-10 in the Florida panhandle to the Wiregrass region of southeast Alabama. This week in Washington County Florida where it was planned to connect with I-10, county commissioners voted 3 to 2 against support for the project.

There's much sound and fury surrounding the proposed road and finger wagging about the secrecy of the promoters, and the "lack of information."
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A Supreme Court ruling this week in a patent case on mobile telephone chipsets - Quanta vs LG Electronics - deals with many of the same issues raised by TransCore in their litigation against ETC, and touches indirectly on the value of IBM's patent claim to variable pricing tolls.
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We asked a senior official in the Rendell Administration recently: "Why does the Governor put up with having his plan to lease the Turnpike trashed every day by the Turnpike Commission? Why did he appoint these guys only to let them stomp all over him?"

There was a silence on the line and then he said: "I'm tempted, I'm tempted...If I answered that question however..." and that was about it.
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