TORONTO 407 system under scrutiny

TORONTO

407 system under scrutiny

The revolutionary tolling systems of the 407 pike in Toronto are under keen scrutiny, as rivals and skeptics ask how well they are working. 407-Express Toll Route (ETR) is the world’s first complex multiple interchange toll road without any on-site toll collection. At highway speed it remotely tolls not only vehicles with radio (RF) transponders, but also uses license plate video to identify and bill other vehicle owners by mail.

We gained unofficial access to several weeks of raw daily report data from the 407 toll road operations center, which could have been interpreted as reflecting quite high rates of problems. After submitting a list of questions about apparently alarming aspects of the data, we were given a lengthy discussion of it with Jennifer D’Angelo, Director 407 Operations of the Canadian Highways Management Corp which runs the pike under contract to the Ontario Transp Capital Corp, owners of the road.

The daily reports we obtained show almost one in six “transactions” (13%) classfied in a column called “Bad Image” which suggested on its face a higher rate of failure of the system than had been understood. D’Angelo tells us this “Bad Image” category covers a variety of different procedures and outcomes per trip and that plates unable to be successfully imaged and identified are only a proportion of the total numbers. Moreover, she says, there may be multiple categorizations “Bad Image” for the same pass of a toll gantry, as different images of the same vehicle-pass are viewed from different cameras at the Video Exceptions Processing (VEP) center in an effort to identify it. The proportion of vehicles producing an image which is untraceable and unbillable, says D’Angelo, is “less than 5%” of total transactions — divided between (1) obscured license plates of toll evaders and (2) imageable but unbillable out-of-province vehicles from jurisdictions with whom Ontario has no reciprocal agreement for supply of addresses for billing. This is principally Quebeckers, and D’Angelo says, she hears an agreement with Quebec is close, but this is a matter between the provincial governments. The delays have been due to the requirement that Quebec authorities satisfy themselves that privacy procedures in Ontario satisfy Quebec law. (Our suggestion TRnl#25 Mar98 p12, that this might be the final straw for the breakup of the Canadian federation may have been unduly alarmist!)

These imageable-but-unbillables among the “Bad Images” are being retained, D’Angelo says, so the “shunpiking Quebeckers” as we termed them in a flight of throwaway hyperbole in a recent report, may eventually get their toll bills after all. An undetermined question is whether they are accumulating interest. [We also wonder whether Quebeckers will like being classified as “Bad Images.” A more diplomatic phrase might be “Guests for now.”]

The rate of about 8k “Bad Images” reported per weekday at the VEP would represent about 3% trips, if an average of 2 bad images were generated per trip but could be less than that if multiples are involved — not inconsistent with the official claim that overall somewhat under 5% of trips are currently unbillable, because of unreadable images plus vehicles from jurisdictions not supplying addresses.

Great technology

D’Angelo says “the toll system has proven itself” and that it is “great technology.” She says a proportion of patrons have been “testing us, trying to work out ways of beating the system.” But she says that they increasingly realize the system is robust and that only blatant illegalities, such as obscuring or removing the license plate, work. Overall she says evasion is “a small and manageable problem.”

The reports we obtained cover April 27 in some detail and much of the rest of the month though for some time they indicate a report server was “down.” Apr 27 saw nearly 143k vehicle trips of which 67% were handled by transponder, 33% by video or imaging. In the peak hour electronic tolling (ET) handled 71.6% of trips. The peak hour for video was 5pm to 6pm when 4,861 vehicles were imaged. The system requires images at entry and at exit to compute trip length and toll. There were 9,833 images made in the peak hour Apr 27 — suggesting 111 superfluous images processed (9833 - 2x4861).

The reports show daily calls to the customer service center in the range 1400 to 2300 weekdays with the average about 2k. 46% are inquiries about invoices. A third of these or about 300/weekday result in “account modifications,” presumably a write-off of a toll charge. The equivalent fulltime customer service staff on duty is in the range 19 to 24 weekdays. Average waiting time for customers on the telephones is about 40secs.

A billing summary sheet shows the center is sending out batches of 45k to 72k bills at a time, every 2 to 4 days for total amounts ranging between $470k and $1.1m (Canadian$=70c.) We calculate a monthly rate of billing of 630k bills for C$7m, the average bill being C$11. The video surcharges of C$1.00/trip amount to 22% of the total billed amount during April — C$1.5m vs C$5.4m for tolls.

Vehicles without working transponders are imaged and the images go to the Video Exceptions Processing (VEP) center. There all new images are view by operators on monitors whether or not their license plates can be interpreted by automatic optical character recognition algorithms. And all commercial vehicles are viewed. The daily report uses the term “transactions” but the total bears no apparent relation to the number of trips reported as “% video.” D’Angelo says a better term would be “work units” or procedures performed because some images only need one procedure and others take several. The term ‘transactions’ that they have adopted internally is inapt, she says.

The VEP center has 16 work stations and at the beginning all were manned for 12 hour shifts weekdays. That is down now to about 12 manned on average for shifts that vary between 8 and 12 hours weekdays and less at weekends.

Staffing has been cut 25% and will decline further, D’Angelo says. Much of the workload is processing first time users. After they have been viewed by operators subsequent image processing can usually be left to the automatic optical character recognition. D’Angelo says that her objective is to get 80% of images processed automatically, with only 20% being viewed. They are not near that ratio yet because of their rule that all new vehicles must be viewed first time and because of the confidence levels they have set for the automatic character recognition.

“We are being cautious about confidence levels for the moment,” says D’Angelo.

Staff on images cut

The daily report tabulation we have shows on an average day the procedures performed were 47k ‘Plate Verify,’ 13k ‘Image Verify,’ 8k ‘Bad Image,’1.5k ‘Class Verify’ and 3k ‘MTO Accounts’ (government freebies.) ‘Total Transactions’ daily are about 64k. (The numbers don’t add up and do not correspond to other ‘transaction’ numbers.)

D’Angelo tells us basic VEP operators do the ‘Plate Verify’ work looking at an image of each plate. Only if the effort to validate it doesn’t work do the images get referred to supervisors who have authority to look at a fuller “image” of the rear of the vehicle and who perform the ‘Image Verify’ work.

Transponders out

The reports show 97k toll accounts with 160k transponders on issue to customers at end-Apr, only 9k of which are for heavy vehicles. CHMC has 95k transponders in inventory, a big change from late last year when it was issuing them as fast as it could take delivery.

One staffer told us the roadside equipment is working “fabulously” apart from occasionally triggering “pictures of bare pavement.” The backroom equipment is working “reasonably well” he said, having started off “a bit shakily.” He said looking back a “bit of a mistake” was made in adopting an object-oriented rather than a true relational database for the revenue management system and that this makes it awkward to adapt and less easily changed. He said the major enforcement problem is drivers of pickups driving the toll road with their tailgates down obscuring their license plate. It may require a concerted police campaign to get this under control.

Still skewed

The reports show a daily pattern of trips highly skewed to am and pm peaks (see graph), despite the higher tolls in the rush hours and the off-peak and evening discounts (the 10c, 7c and 4c/km toll rate tiers for cars.)

On a typical weekday traffic is tiny before 6am. 6am to 7am is 5k veh, 7-8am 15k, 8-9am the peak hour 17k, 9-10am 9k and then 10-3pm 6k veh/hr before it rises to the pm peak which is slightly less than the am peak. Real rush hours on 401 are just 2-hours and traffic almost never approaches congested conditions. The roadway is mostly 6-travel lanes (2x3) and space to widen inward to 10-lanes. It has plentiful interchanges, long generous ramps, of 2 and 3-lanes width, and has avoided adjacent loops, Virginia-style, so weaving problems are minimized. The generous design of the interchanges and ramping seems to give 407 more capacity than the normal 6-lane motorway. In its initial untolled state it was handling 300k trips/day and point flows of 140k veh/day with only mildly degraded service.

56km of the current project’s 69km is now operating. D’Angelo told us that last winter was mild and the spring has been relatively dry (unlike most of N.Am) so construction on the remainder of the highway continues to leap ahead of schedule. They could complete construction and have the whole 69km complete by Sept, tho’ the final leg of c2km at the eastern end in Markham may be kept closed with barriers because the local city doesn’t want the traffic — until further major eastern extensions are made in the 3 to 5 years period.

Traffic and even more so revenue is ahead of forecast, D’Angelo told us. She said people on the project are “very proud” of how it is working out. Though she did volunteer that that the reporting system could be sharpened up. (Contact CHMC 905 264 5200)