MAINE:Probably Dumping AT/Comm for Mark IV

“We’ve worked at the system and we have got it working a bit better, but it is still not satisfactory. We are approaching a decision whether we go on putting more money into it (the AT/Comm system) or whether we would be better off to now put our resources into a new system.”

Violette said that one of the attractions of getting a new toll system is that it would allow the Maine Turnpike to join the E-ZPass Inter-Agency Group (IAG) and serve a larger number of customers than is possible with the orphan AT/Comm system.

In the winter weekdays the Maine pike does about 125k tolls/day with about 35% ET tolls, but during the summer it does 225k/day with about 20% ET usage, the difference being tourist related traffic. The tourists are largely from Massachusetts and New York and increasingly their vehicles carry E-ZPass tags. There are 2.5m tags in the NY/nNJ area and by year’s end there could be 500k in Massachusetts. The three summer months see 40% of the year’s traffic on the Maine pike, exactly the peak conditions when it most needs high ET usage to keep traffic moving through the toll plazas. The case for catering to E-ZPass tags on tourist windshields seems strong, and likely to grow stronger.

The existing ET system brandnamed Transpass and using AT/Comm equipment came into operation Sept 16, 1997 (TRnl#22 Dec 97 p3). It implements trip tolling, matching electronic registrations on entry and on exit. But cash patrons who previously had pulled a magstripe ticket for trip tolling on entry to pay their toll on exit, now face three barrier plazas and some ramp plazas. The scheme for the switch from a ticket system to point tolls included a fourth barrier plaza but that has been blocked – so far – by anti-road groups.

Violette says in retrospect they made a mistake in buying an overcomplex system: “We bought a custom-designed Ferrari when we should have bought a Ford or a Toyota.” He said another serious mistake was allowing AT/Comm to take on system integration: “They were an equipment supplier. They just weren’t up to writing the software and tying everything together. They were going broke too, which didn’t help.”

“In hindsight we...”

But he says that’s easy to see looking back. When critical decisions were made the E-ZPass interoperability arrangements were just speculation and Massachusetts next door had no plans for electronic tolling. And, Violette says, despite its shortcomings the AT/Comm system has more than paid for itself in toll collector savings. The ET element of the new toll system cost about $11m, but annual savings have been $4m to $5m/yr, from the reduction of close to 100 full-time equivalent staff. Just as important the system has also greatly reduced backups at the toll plazas and transformed service to patrons by giving them the pleasure of drive-through travel. He says the system will five years old by the time it is replaced, possibly in 2002, and it will have fully justified the investment.

AT/Comm systems are also in use on the M2 Motorway in the northern suburbs of Sydney Australia and at the Gateway toll bridge in Brisbane. They are likely to be phased out in favor of 5.8Ghz European CEN-278 systems that the larger Australian toll agencies have since adopted.

The Oklahoma turnpike is working with TransCore on details of a contract to install a new generation electronic toll system to replace its existing large Amtech read-only system. (TRnl#45 Jan00 p1) Officials there seemed strongly inclined to go with an E-ZPass compatible Mark IV system. Of course unlike AT/Comm, Amtech is a very live rival and looks likely to be part of TransCore shortly.

BACKGROUND: AT/Comm was formed in the early-90s by a group of investors around the family of the former IBTTA head John Hassett. It was one of the first companies to offer a transponder promising more capability than the existing passive backscatter read-only ‘tags.’ The AT/Comm ‘Smart Transponder’ featured an active transmitter, an ability for the roadside transceiver to ‘write’ to up to 18 different memory compartments in the tag, full duplex communications, audio beeps, an alphanumeric LCD display operated by a key. It boasted an ability to reduce the load on central toll management systems by incorporating more intelligence in the tag. It was also unusual in operating the uplink (tag to reader) at 40MHz while the downlink was a conventional 915MHz. The low frequency was supposedly to help the transponder signal penetrate metallized windshields, but it has created a host of small interference problems for tollsters. On Sydney’s M2 the 40MHz uplink keeps engineers busy tracking down wireless baby-monitors, domestic intercom systems and other small household devices in houses nearby that are interfering with ET.

The system was designed to keep account balances in the tag memory on the theory - wrong – that this would relieve the toll authority of the need to keep this in its central system. Patrons could scroll through and get their last dozen or so transactions on the display.

Illinois the AT/Comm biggie in 93

In 1993 AT/Comm gained its biggest potential sale - to the Illinois Tollway, the largest toll facility in the US in transaction numbers. A small pilot project on several ramps that year was expanded in 1994 into what was described as an order to equip 196 lanes, plus a decision to wire over 500 lanes and 280k tags by July 98 (TTI’s TOLLtrans Oct/Nov 96). In 1996 AT/Comm succeeded in selling systems to Maine, the Queensland Australia Gateway bridge, and the M2 Hills Motorway in Sydney Australia.

But the deployment in Illinois went very slowly and in late 1996 with only 30k tags in use and fewer than half the toll lanes wired the Tollway issued an RFP for completing electronic tolling that was clearly open to substitute systems. In the spring of 1997 ISTHA (TRnl#13 Mar97 p1) selected a Syntonic (later TransCore) Mark IV proposal. It was cheaper to scrap the AT/Comm readers and tags and build Mark IV from scratch than to complete the AT/Comm installation. AT/Comm, as was its habit whenever the world didn’t conform to its wishes, sued. And eventually it lost in court, as it had lost many previous cases, but its litigious obstructionism led many to dislike the company. The quip was AT/Comm employed more lawyers than engineers.

In Jan 98 ISTHA switched off its AT/Comm readers and collected some 36k AT/Comm tags in large trash barrels, as a Mark IV system replaced it. In Sydney the M2 motorway has said it will scrap the AT/Comm system because of a need to adopt a CEN standard system interoperable with the systems on the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Airport Motorway systems.