NJ TURNPIKE:Heading for 50% ET within the month

This was perhaps the most spectacular electronic toll startup so far, because by the Monday Oct 2, the first weekday of operation, 40% of the 550k trips per day were being tolled by transponder.

Edward Gross, exec-director of the Turnpike says “We don’t have queues any more” at the toll plazas. He says ET “makes a fundamental difference” to the way the road works. “It’s just a different road.”

The more rapid movement through the toll plazas has thrown up some new chokepoints in the system, especially at what they call ‘The Complex’ of interchanges (IC-16, 17, 18W) where NJ-495, and NJ-3 (linked to the Lincoln Tunnel) hook into the two legs of the Turnpike in the Secaucus/Meadowlands area.

Gross says the most common reaction of customers is: “My God I can’t believe it. No queues. This is an overwhelming success story.”

The spectacular launch on the NJ Turnpike was made possible by the more than 3m toll transponders already in use in the New York/New Jersey/Delaware area under the collaborative E-ZPass arrangements. E-ZPass toll agencies accept one another’s tags, and swap computer lists of valid tagholders, and settle net balances daily.

Around the northern section of the New Jersey Turnpike well over a million motorists had E-ZPass transponders, most of them to use the Turnpike’s sister toll road the Garden State Parkway, or the toll bridges and tunnels to New York City. In southern New Jersey there are now over half a million motorists using E-ZPass tags on the four Delaware River bridges into Philadelphia and on the nearby Atlantic City Expressway and on Delaware’s toll plazas, who can now make use of them on the southern stretch of the Turnpike.

45k tags/week!

Still the opening of the NJ Turnpike has also stimulated demand for new transponders, already high because of the Garden State Parkway. They are being issued by the Regional Consortium’s customer service contractor Chase Manhattan at the amazing rate of 45k/week. In the third week another 27k were issued. Before the opening of the NJ Turnpike tags were going out at around 9k/week. All this has the Mark IV factory near Toronto airport humming, and it has strained Chase’s ‘Fulfilment Center’ which however has managed to clear each day’s orders the same day throughout. (The Consortium is running about 1.75 tags/account.)

Some glitches were caused initially by the surge of interest. The E-ZPass website was regularly getting more than a thousand hits a second, Gross told us, and it crashed several times in the first days, probably from overloading. The E-ZPass call center of the New Jersey/Delaware Regional Consortium has also been unable to handle calls for people telephoning in for transponders. Extra T-1 lines were installed and extra operators recruited to handle calls at the customer service center in Secaucus operated by the Chase Manhattan Bank. As of Sept 25th 796k regional consortium transponders were on issue in New Jersey and Delaware, and the number seems likely to top the million mark by year’s end.

Adesta/MFS gets credit

The successful NJ Turnpike startup is a tribute to engineers at Adesta/MFS who worked on despite great difficulties and uncertainties generated by the turmoil at the top of the company. During the course of the work it has had trouble paying suppliers and even making payroll on occasions. Only repeated injections of funds from WorldCom, drawn forth by the large performance bonds it has held, have kept Adesta/MFS afloat. The Regional Consortium which is led by the NJ Turnpike placed extraordinary restrictions on Adesta/MFS in order to safeguard itself from a collapse of the company, and to keep open the option of terminating the contract for non-performance. The installation schedule slipped about two years.

Gross says the whole system is working well. There have been few problems of motorist confusion, no noticeable increase in weaving or abrupt lane changes, and no accidents attributed to the changes.

As at other ET installations without gates there are, however, problems of motorists speeding through the ET-only lanes. As elsewhere in the region these have a posted 5mph (8km/hr), but Gross says there are reports from the plazas of some “very high speeds.”

The turnpike is devising a system of warnings and graduated withdrawal of ET-privileges in order to combat the problem – similar to that used by the New York State Thruway. He says it will be operating by the end of the year.

The New Jersey Turnpike job is the last and most challenging of four electronic toll installations being done by Adesta under a single contract worth almost $500 million. That also covers the Garden State Parkway, Delaware toll roads and the Atlantic City Expressway, and operations for at least ten years. The contract was financed with bonds secured to violations revenues plus deficit-commitments from the four toll agencies.

Violations

Gross says that that initial data suggest violations are running around 2%, which he says is consistent with the financial model designed to raise revenues from violation fines to service bonds issued to finance the system. The model provides for declining violations.

Under the contract all the 339 toll lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike will eventually be wired for E-ZPass. But as of the present start-up 160 lanes are wired with about 120 normally being used as dedicated electronic toll lanes. 40 extra provide flexibility for altering the position of ET-lanes. Later the Turnpike expects to have some lanes in mixed manual/ET mode.

The turnpike has some new treadles for axle counting, where existing treadles were poorly placed. All E-ZPass lanes are also equipped with new light curtains from Scientific Technologies Inc (STI). The turnpike is getting a new taller model 1.8m (6') high rather than the 1.5m (5') set that was previously the highest supplied. The light curtains are used to scan for a vehicle end, and they can also measure some aspects of the profile of a vehicle, especially its height.

The Turnpike is also getting violation cameras in every lane to photograph the rear of vehicles that pass through without valid transponders. Later it will install front-facing cameras in truck lanes to record the front of trucks as well as the trailer. Little enforcement activity has occurred so far, the priority being to tune the

The Turnpike also announced recently a decision to go to full highway speed electronic tolling at its Interchange 1 at its far southern end. The present plaza just up from the Delaware Memorial Bridge is inadequate in size and the new plaza will provide extra manual toll lanes as well as dedicated E-ZPass lanes in the center for 55mph (89km/hr) tolling. Fullspeed ET went operational with E-ZPass Sept 30 at a rebuilt IC-6 on the I-276 spur of the turnpike connecting to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. ET-express (ETX) operations are going smoothly with no problems reported yet.

Steve Buente, an engineer monitoring the startup, said extensive testing before the startup had paid off and that most systems were working very well. A few small problems had shown up but they were in process of being resolved. (Contact NJ Turnpike Authority 732 247 0900 www.state.nj.us/turnpike)

CORRECTION: We previously misreported the NJ Turnpike’s peakhours/off-peak toll rate differential that was introduced along with E-ZPass. The lower toll rate applies only on weekdays off-peak. At weekends the full peakhour weekday toll rates are in force.