Philly has ET

Philadelphia has electronic tolling. Dec 18 the Delaware River Port Authority, which runs the four toll bridges between the Philadelphia side and the suburbs of southern NJ began ET with E-ZPass. My Linh Nguyen spokesman for DRPA says the rollout was “great.” By all accounts the problems were rather standard – motorist confusion over toll lanes producing longer queuing in the first two or three peak periods, complaints about tags ordered but not delivered, mismounted tags, and the odd sign not working first up.

Once again a tollster found itself inundated with customer demand for toll tags, and a need to add telephones and shifts at the customer service center. There was great customer enthusiasm. After 3 weeks 10% of transactions were with e-tags and 50k had been issued with no sign of let-up in demand.

The installation by Lockheed took about 18 months longer than originally anticipated. Officials say the whole toll system was rebuilt with all the non-Y2K compatible gear used to collect tolls manually being scrapped. There are gates on the ET-only lanes to enforce the 5mph posted speed limits. A new violation system has not yet been tested.

DRPA implemented a toll increase Jan 3, two weeks after the ET rollout. The car toll, which is levied on westward trips only, went from $2 to $3 for cash, with a 30c discount for ET. And it converted its frequent user plan previously tracked with a barcode reader system and sticker into use of a transponder. The four bridges Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Commodore Barry and Betsy Ross have a total of 27 travel lanes and 45 toll lanes of which 26 are wired for ET. To start with 10 dedicated ET lanes are operating. The bridges carry an average 270k veh/day and do 135k tolls. The toll collector staff has gone from 182 in 1995 to 104 on introduction of ET, and DRPA says, may go down to 90 when E-ZPass matures.

A DRPA patron gets our Special Commendation for “Most Sensitive Mounting Place for a Toll Tag.” Obviously thinking that in the cold of a northeast winter the e-tag needed keeping warm, he stuck it under the hood close by the radiator. Despite the cooking the tag still worked when taken out from under its steel roof.