MFS fails more tests in Bay area

MFS failed another set of tests in the Bay area recently. Caltrans says the MFS electronic tolling installation on the Carquinez bridge –which a changing retinue of MFS technicians has been fiddling with for over 3 years – is still generating cross-reads and other anomalies beyond contract specifications. MFS original contract required it to have electronic tolling running on the bridge by June 30 1996. The bridge was fully instrumented by about March 1996. Initial reports were that the major problems were confined to the automatic vehicle classification system and that other systems were sufficiently close to specs that some fine-tuning would fix them.

In July 1996 Charles Price the Caltrans project director said: “We are quite close to having an operational system.” He was hopeful the Carquinez system would be working fully and proven by the second quarter of 1997. The other 8 bridges in the Caltrans system were then predicted to be operational by the end of 1997.

In March of 1997 when it was evident those targets would not be met James Van Loben Sels, head of Caltrans told us during a conversation over lunch at a conference near San Francisco airport that severe action including penalties would be gotten out of MFS if problems dragged on much longer.

But that and several subsequent deadlines have come and gone without any result. Early this year a despairing official at MFS told us that he was worried they “might never get Bay area bridges” to meet specs. He said that every talent the company had put on the project had been unable to get it working adequately. Caltrans is now reporting more problems with the unfinished ET system on the Carquinez Bridge than it was reporting three years ago. Maybe the system is starting to show its age?