Lockheed & TCA part ways

Lockheed is leaving its toll collection contract on southern California’s toll roads two years early. The Transp Corridors Agencies (TCA), owner of the roads has not been getting along well with Lockheed for more than a year apparently. Each party thinks the other is responsible for troubles.

Lockheed officials have said they will be out by next spring. That gives TransCore, PB’s toll services division and others an opportunity for major new work. Lockheed is being paid about $15m/year for running toll collection – electronic and manual.

We have accumulated a large file of emails and telephone calls from customers with problems on the TCA tollroads because telephone directory assistance and the web confuse the TCA’s brandname ‘the toll roads’ with our newsletter name, and often give us the first exposure to TCA’s angry patrons. It’s interesting. They certainly indicate problems of all kinds at the TCA, ranging from patrons getting confused on the toll roads and getting kept on hold for ages when they call and giving up, through to people being billed or hit with a violation notice who say they’ve never been near a toll road, etc. Every tollroad, every business has such cockups. The question is: How widespread are they? And: What is done to fix them? The messages themselves don’t give any information on that.

But the separation of TCA and Lockheed indicates it wasn’t a good relationship, and that maybe there were too many problems and they weren’t getting attended to.