CORRECTION:E-470 Was First with Multi-lane Open Road Highway Speed ET

We reported way back (TRnl#12 Feb 97 p10) that “so far as we can establish” the Oklahoma Turnpike pioneered highway speed, open road, electronic tolling when on the morning of Sept 1, 1991 they opened ET on the Kilpatrick, Cherokee and Chickasaw turnpikes. Motorists with Amtech read-only tags were tolled at full highway speed while on a pair of regular lanes in each direction under a gantry carrying the Amtech readers. We thought that was a first.

Wrong.

E-470 in Colorado beat them by 6 weeks! On July 15, 1991 the E-470 Public Highway Authority began tolling at its mainline Plaza A in Parker CO with multi-lane, open road, highway speed electronic tolling. The ET system then used surface acoustic wave (SAW) read-only tags from Cubic which worked pretty well at high speeds. But they performed terribly in slow traffic and were scrapped about two years ago.