CORRECTION & APOLOGY:US did provide $s for E-ZPass

Munch, munch, Awgh. Yuck. That’s your editor eating humble pie. I was wrong. I wrote last issue (TRnl#34 Dec-98 p13) that there were no USDOT-$s whatever in the E-ZPass program and said rambunctuously derogatory things about the Fed Hwys writers. As Yogi Bera said so sagely: “It isn’t what you don’t know, it’s what you know that ain’t so,” that gets you into trouble.

I thought I knew and I didn’t. Since we published I’ve checked around properly. The New York State Thruway got $11m some years ago toward the implementation of electronic toll collection under the USDOT’s ITS program. So did the Regional Consortium in New Jersey and Delaware. They got some $35m, also several years ago. The Thruway’s grant covered about a third of the costs of their implementation of ET. And the grant to the Regional Consortium NJ/DE covered about 7% of the cost of their project. Many people have forgotten this. I never knew it. It has never been the subject of any announcement, press release or other publicity I know of.

I have established that the manufacturer Mark IV received no US$s, nor did the largest implementor of E-ZPass, namely MTA Bridges and Tunnels in New York City. Nor did the small E-ZPass organization itself, the Inter-Agency Group, receive any federal support.

But I did write that no federal-$s were involved and that was incorrect and I withdraw and apologize for what I wrote on that basis. If I had known of the unpublicized NYSTA and Regional Consortium money I would simply have written that it was a bit of cheek for the FHWA’s PUBLIC ROADS magazine to write that “the FHWA is deploying ... systems such as EZ Pass...”

That remains quite false. The FHWA is not itself deploying E-ZPass. By no stretch of the imagination can it be called a US govt program. Several toll agencies deploying E-ZPass got some US govt help. The great bulk of the funding is independent of the US govt. The systems were designed by the manufacturer Mark IV at its own expense, selected by the toll agencies without US govt involvement, and are being deployed by independent toll agencies, mostly from their own resources, without any US govt oversight or expertise.

FHWA should not claim it is deploying E-ZPass, or that it is their program. That goes way too far. But I went too far also. Sorry.