NEW HAMPSHIRE:Modernization & E-ZPass on the way

Castle Rock is working with D’Agneese Keeler on a study to devise a systems modernization proposal, which will go out to RFP this Sept with vendor selection scheduled for Nov.

Electronic tolling (ET) will be part of the modernization, to be implemented either along with, or soon after main system modernization. ET will be Mark IV E-ZPass and it will be required to be immediately interoperable with Massachusetts.

New Hampshire has an open system with 5 mainline and 5 ramp plazas for a total of 82 toll lanes located on three toll roads which have a total centerline length of 151km (94mi). And last year the bureau, a part of the NH state DOT, collected 94m tolls for revenues of $57m. There are 300 toll collectors.

Three Pikes

The New Hampshire Turnpike proper is the original stretch of I-95 that links Massachusetts and Maine along the short 25km (16mi) stretch of NH coast between those two states. It is 2x4-lanes in flat coastal countryside, and is heavily oriented to interstate trucking and interstate vacationers. The Everett Turnpike (I-93/I-293/US-3) is a major north-south route linking the main populations centers of lower NH (Concord, Manchester and Nashua) to the northern and western fringe of the Boston metro area via MA-128 the beltway around it. The Everett Tpk also links with US-3 inside the Boston beltway that is an arterial to central Boston that is planned for improvement. The southern part of the Everett competes to some degree with the free I-93 that heads southeast via Lawrence, and constitutes the only freeway that made it into central Boston from the north.

The bureau recently completed major reconstruction and widening (to 8-lanes) of the Everett Tpk at its southern end within the densely settled Nashua area. It has been embroiled in years of dispute with the USEPA over construction of a loop road to the east. In a compromise, unconnected stubs north and south, are being built.

The third tolled road, the Spaulding Turnpike (NH-16) follows northwest off I-95 from Portsmouth right along the Maine line, around Dover, to Rochester. The Dover section is untolled.

New Hampshirites are an upright toll-respecting population, by and large. Since 1991, the NH bureau of pikes has had a purely ‘honor’ system for paying tolls 9pm to 5am at 3 ramp plazas with no staff on duty and no enforcement. Yet according to the manager of toll ops Al Almasy they’ve consistently collected in the range of 80 to 90% of tolls due. Perhaps the 10% to 20% toll-shirkers are from those decadent places down south? (Al Almasy 603 485 3806 aalmasy@dot.state.nh.us)