407-ETR Will they really pay?

Many of those skeptical about the “cashless toll road” say they think there will be too high a default rate. 407-ETR in Canada is an interesting test in that regard. Officials we spoke to there insist there’s no major problem and that patrons are paying their bills more or less as expected. But they won’t give numbers on non-payers. As with unpaid parking tickets, cars will not be re-registered by the provincial authorities until unpaid toll bills plus penalties are paid, so that the OTCC does not have to swamp the court system going after the shirkers.

They will say that they have a cash flow of $4.5m/mth (we use US$s unless otherwise indicated.) That’s ahead of projections.

Traffic is running now at 118k trips/weekday so the average toll collected must be about $1.50. That suggests a lot of the traffic is at the top rush hour rate (C10c/km, 7c.) and a continued increase in average trip lengths.

62% of 407’s toll transactions are currently being done with transponders of which 140k are now on issue, so they have a higher transponder usage rate than most US pikes (0.5 tolls/day/tag vs 0.3)

Transponder users on 407 pay a one-time activation fee of $8 and a monthly account fee of $1.40. Those without transponders have their license plate imaged and if their address can be tracked down, they get a monthly toll bill in the mail with a C$1.00 (70c) surcharge for each imaged trip. Officials say it is too early to tell whether the costs of mailing and collection are being covered but the 70c surcharge was designed to cover the expected costs. Transponders are mandatory for heavy vehicles (over 5t) but when they enter the road without a transponder they are being imaged and hit with a C$25 surcharge and warning, and they are legally liable to prosecution.

Shunpiking Quebeckers: Toronto has a steady flow of out-of-province traffic, which poses a challenge to the automatic license plate recognition system, but officials say it is working satisfactorily. Agreements are in place with most other provinces and four nearby US states (NY, OH, PA,MI) for routine supply of addresses and names of owners of their license plate owners imaged on 407. Ontario expects to conclude agreements with IL and FL shortly. Interestingly the premier province of Canada has yet to conclude an agreement with Quebec — another sure sign of the impending dissolution of the Canadian federation? So the Quebeckers continue to ride toll-free on 407. Maybe the Ontarians will just have to start sending awful smelly stuff down the St Lawrence River until the lowdown rotten shunpiking Frogs cooperate to collect those tolls. (Contact Pamela Wing OTCC 416 326 9384 Wingp2@epo.gov.on.ca)

Safety: 407 has not yet had a fatal accident, which is great news. By our back o’ ta envelope calculations traffic on 407 will have run up about 750 million veh-km in its 8 months of operation. An average urban motorway in North America like 407 has about 4 fatalities per billion veh-km, so by statistical probabilities if it were of average safety for that kind of highway and were having an average run of accidents it would have had 3 accident deaths by now. Turnpikes are about a third safer so make that 2. The average signalized urban arterial has about 9 deaths/billion-veh-km, so if the same traffic had been travelling on those kinds of roads maybe 7 people would have died by now. One might guess that 20% of the traffic on 407 is induced demand (people running up veh-km that they wouldn’t have run up before because of previous congestion), so maybe there would have been 5.5 accident deaths by now without 407 and assuming the traffic was still running on stuff like Steeles Av and H-7, the parallel surface streets. The 0.5 represents your reporter, half frightened to death by the wild left turns on a red, routinely practiced in Toronto across several lanes of oncoming traffic. These Ontarians may have one great automated pike but some of their signal systems are vintage 1928. Two phases max, this-a-way or that-a-way. Kept looking up to try and catch the eye of some clumsy behelmeted cop in an elevated intersection control booth working those Edison era lever switches. Signal salesmen Peek, Ecololite etc — for Gawd’s sake sell ‘em multi-phase controllers and left turn arrows before we have to drive up there again.