TORONTO The 407 revolution

TORONTO

The 407 revolution

The last time they tolled roads in Toronto, Canada it was on Yonge Street in 1896. Yonge Street (pronounced ‘young’) now is a busy 30m wide urban arterial lined by shops and highrise apartments, with traffic signals at every intersection and a subway line under it. In 1831 when tolls were establish to pay for road improvements Yonge Street was the main highway going out from the small town of a few thousand by the lakefront that had developed around British Fort York near where two small rivers enter Lake Ontario. It led into the farming, trapping and lumber-cutting hinterland of Ontario to the north. Tolls were a half-penny for pigs, sheep and goats, a penny for oxen and cows and 2 pence for animal drawn vehicles. Policemen, firefighters and doctors went free. (Apparently not clergy here!)

No one now seems to know whether the travellers on Yonge Street’s wood plank road, 3.6m wide, at other times ‘macadam’ gravel, were halted to pay tolls at up to seven different tollgates by a classic British turnpike, the spearlike barrier (the ‘pike’) that turned horizontally on a vertical rotatable post or hub. The gates could have been an upswinging bar that pivoted on a horizontal pin in a slot in a post, the light bar balanced by a large counterweight — a manually operated version of the electrically powered barrier ‘gates’ that today’s Canadians know at the customs/immigration plaza on the Peace bridge that they must pass through at Niagara or Buffalo to drive into the US. Or of the kind they see on many toll roads in nearby US states. Yonge Street toll collectors almost certainly recorded the tolls with quill pen entries in an accounts book on Toronto’s last toll road. Or maybe fountain pens were just making their appearance?

Lasers & front ends of missiles The histories of roads in North America also mention a major pike east from Toronto along the route of Highway 401 to Kingston, halfway to Montreal. In any case after just a century without toll roads Canada’s largest province is jumping all the way from such simple manual methods into the very forefront of electronic computing, digital image processing and matching, laser profiling, fiberoptics and radio frequency communications for tolling. Leaping right past automatic coin machines, punched or magstripe toll tickets and credit card swipe and the simple use of radio-transponders it is implementing the world’s first fully automated multiple interchange toll road that accomodates occasional users as well as the regulars with radio frequency transponders.

Toronto’s Highway 407 really is a huge advance, and its success or failure will have implications around the world. Roads are usually built as toll roads because there is no other way to raise the money to finance them. 407 was started as a ‘free’ road, with $150m having been spent on interchanges and other work in the preceding 10 years, but the province of Ontario decided to ‘go toll’ in 1993 because the politics of taxing and budgeting was such that they estimated it could take 25 years to get 407 built that way. And they wanted it “now.” They got it in 4 years instead of 25 by raising loans secured to the prospective toll revenues. And in the process they cut costs by a quarter through involving the country’s leading construction firms in a competitive design-build and value engineering exercise in which they simplified interchanges, standardized bridge beams and decks, removed deadweight from structures, bought the world’s largest most advanced paving machine, and pursued a mass production learning curve with their construction crews in building the 127 structures and laying a beautifully engineered pavement. Compared to many recent US roads, not to speak of some Asian ones, this looks an amazing bargain at C$930m: total including the provincial work $800m. Economies of scale. Exemplary but not new. The Pennsylvania and NJ turnpikes were built much like 407 in 2 or 3 years 60 and 50 years ago, and in China today it is being done many places using toll financing.

A much spaghettied pike: What’s new about 407 is that it is by far the most ambitious effort yet to overcome the traditional shortcomings of toll collection. Pre-407 the state of toll art has been that unless you have a electronic transponder you have to stop at a toll booth to pay money or pass a commuter ticket to a collector or swipe a credit card in a card reader or you have to slow to walking pace to throw coins into a coin machine. California Private Transp Company’s 91-Express toll road in Orange county California which is billed as the “world’s first fully automated toll road” (which incidentally distinguishes toll liable vehicles from free carpoolers by counting passengers with a spotter by M1EB, Mark I eyeball, technology as the Air Force would put it) achieves free flow and manages to make do without any toll plazas by the simple expedient of saying that establishment of a transponder account is a pre-condition of using their facility. “No transponder no go our road” is the pidgin message 91-Express sends to the Orange Co natives.

Toll highways pre-407 have been largely designed to accomodate the toll collection, a collection-tail-wagging-the-road-dog situation. At 407 they started with the road and designed it for maximum service to motorists and then designed the tolling system to support it. Part of that service is to make it a non-stop facility will remote payment, but it also goes to the design of the road itself. Usually toll roads have few, widely spaced out toll plazas and interchanges because of the need to concentrate tolling at a limited number of tolling points for maximum utilization of plaza staff and equipment. So toll road interchanges are usually 10km or more apart. The first 69km section of 407 due for completion 1998 has 29 interchanges with provision for 3 more later, an average spacing 2.5km now (2.2km later). In several places the interchanges are so close that the on-ramps and off-ramps are grade-separated in ‘basketweaves’ (see drawings). Ramps are generously dimensioned, many being 2-lanes wide, a few 3-lanes. All this ‘spaghetti’ of ramps makes for excellent interconnections to the 6 motorways and the 23 arterial and local streets to which 407 is connected along the northside of the 5 million population metropolis of greater Toronto. The new toll road will be used for short jogs east and west as well as longer trips. Ali Mekky the chief traffic modeller at the Ministry of Transport Ontario (MTO) estimates the average trip on 407 will be about one-sixth its length (11km) so substantial amounts of traffic will be going only 4 or 5km (kms). This is the world’s first toll road deliberately designed to accomodate a mix of shorthop and long distance traffic much like a typical section of North American urban freeway. By gathering its traffic from a variety of arterials and dispersing exiting traffic it will maximize its own flow and minimize traffic getting to and from it on existing surface roads.

The 29 interchanges have a total of 126 entry and exit points. The toll schedule of the highway’s first section lists 135 different combinations of trips for 18 interchanges over 36km, but math suggests over 400 trip combinations for the full road. The toll is to be levied at 10c/km peakhours weekdays, 7c/km at out of peak weekdays, all day weekends and holidays, and 4c/km at night for light vehicles (5t or less) equipped with a transponder. Heavy vehicles (which must have a transponder) are charged 2 and 3 times these rates per km. (Above are Canadian cents andn rates convert to US4.2c, 3c, 1.8c/mile.) 407 follows the “closed” tolling concept of registering and matching entry and exit information.

Garner gantries: Though there are no toll plazas you’d have to be pretty unobservant not to notice that 407 is different from other roads. Hughes ads and other artists’ representations of the automatic toll road of the future show light sleek uncluttered toll gantries that you might almost miss driving by. On all the 407 ramps there are a pair of chunky gantries — built on mighty steel box posts 18”x8” (450x190mm) with an overhead 11” (273mm) tubular truss structure and a catwalk — so that sophisticated tweaking of the antennas and lens cleans can be done without lane closures. OTCC chief engineer Dave Garner explained you need a very solid structure to get sharp pictures. If he’d built the ganrties to the artists’ specs, he says, the tolling would have been shut down by wind.

Snaps ya backside: The first gantry contains the gear for dealing with vehicles without transponders. These are detected by Vehicle Detection and Classification (VDAC) lasers (Schwartz Electro-Optical Inc’ Autosense II) and absent any indication of the presence of a working transponder from the passive angle-of-arrival or locator antennas, the system illuminates the rear of the vehicle and shoots pictures with one or mroe digital cameras mounted on the first gantry. A sensor atop a gantry post adjusts the lighting level for optimal pictures. In the 2-lane ramp setup this first gantry mounts 2 lights and 7 digital cameras (from Pulnix) together with a pair of check tags (transponders), designed for testing out and calibrating the radio gear on the second gantry. The image shot from the first gantry is sent together with vehicle class, and time and place information to the central toll processing computers (Big Blues) in the operations center where they have to be matched with similar imagery and data gathered at a similar gantry arrangement at each exit point so that a toll can be calculated. In about 19 out of 20 reads, tests suggest, the image matching can be done automatically and the license plate dechiphered. The system uses a chip designed for imaging from the front end of a Hughes missile. The name and address of the car owner is next extracted from the province’s motor registry computers on-line. Arrangements are being negotiated for similar access with neighboring provinces and US states. In up to 5% of photo shots, Hughes says, the images may have to be viewed by operators at monitors where it is possible to enhance the license plate image with filters and other means. A staff of 20 will be employed at what is called Video Exceptions Processing (VEP), though the operations contractor hopes to reduce that after the system has settled in. Images are processed by automatic optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms with adjustable levels of confidence. It is planned for now to humanly check each rear image including the license plate at the VEP center against the OCR interpretation the first time it comes into the system and to store the image. Then as rear images reappear on the highway for subsequent trips the automatic OCR will take over and human checking of images will become the exception. A C$1 (70c) surcharge is added to every toll requiring imaging both to cover the costs and to encourage regular users to get electronic transponders.

“ASTMv6 or IAG”? The second gantry, about 12m from the first, carries those vehicle detection and classification lasers (4 over 2-lanes), and in the 2-lane setup 3 ironing-board shaped passive locator

antennas and 4 transceiver antennas, 2 each for ASTMv6 and IAG vehicle-to-roadside communications. In the 2-lane ramp on the second gantry configuration 4 downward pointing Vehicle Detection and Classification (VDAC) lasers having early on served guard duty then turn classifier by measuring the three dimensions of the vehicle, generating a 3D profile and assigning the vehicle one of the various classes — light vehicle, medium, heavy, motor cycle etc.

Where the angle-of-arrival antennas on the 2nd gantry detect a working transponder, they proceed to track it by measuring its angle from their different positions on the gantry. Transponders carried by approaching vehicles are first interrogated to establish by radio signal whether they are ASTMv6 or IAG. Three types of transponders can be handled on 407: (1) a new “Fusion” or dual protocol transponder designed specially for 407 by Mark IV that works with both ASTMv6 readers and with IAG readers and so can communicate with both systems. On 407 these Fusion tags will be set to communicate using ASTMv6 protocols, but if Toronto motorists go to the New York State Thruway or other US IAG facilities with these tags they will work there too — once financial clearing house arrangements are made. (2) ASTMv6-only transponders supplied by Hughes/Delco will also be supplied by OTCC (3) IAG-only tags which will be brought into the system by motorists, mostly Americans, with accounts on the New York State Thruway (just two hours away from Toronto) or some other IAG agency in the mid-Altantic US — the only occasion on which 407 will use its IAG readers.

IAG to need image backup? One sensitive subject is that the US IAG e-toll system has been designed around operations of single toll lanes that have been installed at lane-constrained toll plazas where vehicles slow to 50km/hr or less, and where VRC antennas can be focussed on a specific vehicle space in the roadway so that vehicle tracking is not essential to distinguish one vehicle from another. But on 407’s 2-lane and 3-lane ramps where vehicles will regularly approach the toll gantries at 120km/hr, sometimes straddling lanes, the ASTMv6 system with its angle-of-arrival tracking antenna is declared, at least by Hughes engineers, to be much more accurate than the IAG equipment that lacks separate tracking and multiplexing. By one account IAG tags will need to be supplemented on 407 with digital camera license plate reads because of the danger of mistaken identity.

In any case the transponders will provide the toll system with the account number, registered vehicle class (checkable with the VDAC), and time and place of entry, the data going down the fiber line to the central office to be matched later with similar data gathered at the exit gantries. Most electronic toll systems inform motorists of the status of their account — for example telling him the balance is getting low and needs topping up — via a small changeable message sign hung on the toll plaza structure or bullnose. On 407 with the motorists zooming through at highway speed this information is conveyed via the transponder itself with small lights and beep tones.

Kasparov killers: 407’s central processing is carried out by IBM R24s (Deep Blues), two being used for image managment and toll processing and one for accounts and billing, the last contracted out to the telephone company. Imagery and other data is stored on hard disk first, then backed up onto an automated tape library that uses a robotic arm to retrieve and store tapes in case of dispute about a bill. Unpaid bills will be treated like parking tickets, dealt with by progressively adding penalties and eventually denying license plate renewal.

The imaging system system is specified to handle 15% of 160 million transactions a year or 66,000 images per average day with peak rates twice that. All heavy vehicles on 407 (over 5t) will legally have to have transponders for now. That is because rear license plates often convey useless information, about the owner of the trailer rather than the owner of the tractor who is the one legally liable for the toll. 407 may in the future install a front license plate read system that would have to use a camera system outside visible light range - probably infra-red - since the visible light system used from the rear would produce dangerous glare if deployed frontally.

The various images and communications gathered from the gantry mounted devices are first processed in roadside units alongside the gentries. These are 1.9m high stainless steel cabinets supported by power supply units next to them. They also contain uninterruptible power supplies that will keep the vehicle-to-roadside communications working and stored for about 3 hours without mains supply and images for 30 minutes or so.

Since the system has to move the image as well as data it needs wide bandwidth communications. It’s a fiberoptic line in a ring configuration linking the 126 roadside units at the 29 interchanges to the operations center, using Asynchronus Transfer Mode. The fiber optic communications cost about a quarter of the $52m total spent on 407’s fancy toll system. It is designed for upgrade in the future as the toll road may be extended both east and west, and it may need to carry video surveillance and other traffic management data.

407 is a maintence guy’s dream. There is not a single inductive loop or treadle or other instrument in the pavement, so noone has any excuse to trench or jackhamer holes in the concrete or the asphalt - all the sensors are up on the 252 gantry frames over the ramps.

Audits: The manager of one US toll road told us recently that his auditors are “going nuts” over problems in verifying the data produced by one otherwise much praised electronic toll system. The manner in which it is currently operating, he says, provides no check on how many non-reads or mis-reads are occurring. The system has no effective way of measuring how much revenue it is missing and no way to follow up and get unpaid tolls. He does not think it is a large problem but he says the inability to detail the losses upsets the accountants. The 407 system by routinely photographing and storing the images of all vehicles not tolled electronically is a first in combining a backup billing system with enforcement and auditing.

407’s website will tell you that the road is being equipped with modern video surveillance, and instant notification of an incident. Cyber-lies. It may have been in the plans and accurate when the website was created but it isn’t happening out there on the road.

No NASA control room: 407 has no NASA-style, fancy, big-screen, realtime, multi-view equipped Advanced Traffic Management Center of the kind that the FHWA in the US so loves to fund, for Al Gore types to open. 407 people say that after thorough review they thought their money was better spent on more basic stuff — like 4 guys in pickups to be on patrol on the road to help people in trouble, move broken down vehicles, pick up load spills, racoon roadkill and the like. So many motorists have cell phones these days, they say, they expect their control room will hear about a problem by

telephone, rather than have to see it on a bunch of monitors via video. Still, they have the trunk fiber to support video if they decide they need it later. Also, the tolling data on entries and exits can be programmed to produce data on average speeds (hence congestion or likely incidents) and the software will be written to do this, so the control room will be able to have fancy maps with different links in different colors to display link speeds — which could quickly pinpoint problem sections of the road.

Also there are no overhead variable message signs on 407, unlike on 401 where the changeable signs rather pathetically urge motorists to “Try transit” much of the time, since to inform them of congestion ahead might be so redundant and irritating as to provoke vandalistic stone throwing attacks from idling drivers.

Tow truck deal: Margaret Kelch head of Canadian Highways Management Corportation, the operations contractor, has signed a contract with a group of tow operators to provide a minimum level of tow service (at least one truck present 24 hours) on the highway at a published schedule of charges in return for priority in dispatching. Another innovation — sturdy padlockable steel swing gates on all the entry ramps so that motorists can be physically kept off the road in case of a major incident.

Significance: 407 will be of great interest to established tollsters because of the daring technology leap that it represents. And it will also be of interest to Americans, British, Germans, Belgians and others with large ‘free’ urban motorway systems because it is a working demonstration of how such existing systems could be retrofitted for road pricing. It shows how complex urban motorways can now be wired for tolling without additional right-of-way to accomodate toll plazas and how modern imaging and electronics can be used to implement the user-pays principle to fund and to manage expensive highway infrastructure in a market oriented way — charging what the traffic will bear to make the traffic more bearable.

Fallback funding: If the tolls are a bit thin on 407 they can always concession out guided tours for foreign tollsters, roadpricing nuts, and the just-curious (techno-tourism). And they could surely get corporate sponsors for races (max contestants 504/race) shimmying up those chunky Garner gantry posts to the catwalks, the winner to be determined by digital images from the

VEP Center (techno-sports).

Contacts: Amorelle Saunders, Ontario Transp Capital Corp (owner of 407) 416 326 9050; Isabelle Frati, Canadian Highways Management Corp (operator of 407) 905 264 5200; Martin Gray, Hughes TMS (designer & systems intergrator tolling) 416 971 3335; Martin Capper, Mark IV (toll equipment) 905 624 3025; Mitch Patten, Canadian Highways Internat Corp (builder) 905 858 8026 websites http://www.407etr.com/ & http://www.chichwys.com/