ETX:Center or side?

On Orlando’s Western Expressway (FL-429) already in operation is a mainline toll plaza with central-ETX lanes, while about 100mins drive toward the coast north of Tampa on the Suncoast Parkway (FL-589) they are working on the finishing touches to side-ETX. The first by the Orlando-Orange Co Exwy Auth (OOCEA) is not that different from mainline ETX as seen on the San Joaquin Hills and Eastern/Foothills toll roads in southern California, and Biddles Corner on DE-1. All these have the more spacious feel of a fringe urban motorway in contrast to the tighter uninterrupted paving of central-ETX plazas in Houston, Illinois, Atlanta (GA-400) and Denver (E-470). They have unpaved islands and the space between ETX and cash payment that provide a definite sense of there being two different payment areas.

The side-ETX design is on display at the first mainline toll plaza on Florida DOT’s Suncoast Parkway (opening spring 2001) and is designed into two more mainline toll plazas on the same road that are under construction and will also open over the next 15 months or so. Oklahoma has a couple of side-ETX, and the ill-fated Fredericton-Moncton toll road in New Brunswick. Only two such toll plazas were complete, of which one was in service, before a new anti-toll government in NB abolished tolls, setting the newly built plazas up for demolition. But while it operated, the Moncton toll plaza worked well. Long-distance trucks, many running from the port of Halifax into Maine and Montreal rumbled by at their normal 120km/hr (70mph) on single outside lanes and the staff told us the arrangement was “great.”

Advantages of the side-ETX/central-cash configuration are that it allows for a consolidated, safe and flexible cash toll plaza. With highspeed ETX lanes to the outside the central cash plaza can be a more tranquil environment. In New Brunswick they were able to do without a service tunnel. Toll collectors and suppliers came to the toll plaza on the toll road.

Reversible lanes are possible with ETX to the sides, an important consideration when there are daily ‘tidal’ changes in traffic.

Despite all this it seems side-ETX is destined to be an oddity. Florida DOT officials told us they regard the Suncoast arrangement as “an interim solution” and expect that future ETX on the state turnpike will be central. The Suncoast design goes back 5 to 10 years to a time when it was thought electronic tolling might max out at about 25 percent of total transactions, and cash collection would remain the dominant collection mode.

If cash remains king then the efficiency of the cash plaza guides design and you put cash collection in the center. Another consideration at the time the Suncoast was designed was that enforcement would be more of a problem. Kevin Thibault, production director at Florida’s Turnpike says there were reports that more motorists “just buzzed through” on central ETX lanes than on side lanes.

Now FDOT officials acknowledge that ETX is the way of the future and in future will be placed in the middle.

Oklahoma is doing the same. Their new ETX lanes are central, whereas some of their first ones were on the side.

A side-ETX plaza has to be a lot longer than a central-ETX plaza. That’s because the side-ETX lanes have to ‘belly out’ around the cash plaza but since they must be designed for something like 70mph (112km/hr) they can only have a very gentle curvature right then left. By contrast, a sharper curve right then left on the approaches to a cash plaza on the side is positively helpful in ‘flagging’ the plaza to approaching motorists and slowing traffic. As a result of the sharper curves for cash lanes on the outside a central-ETX arrangement can be much tighter.

From diverge point where the cash and ETX lanes split through to the converge point on the other side of the plaza is 2.9km (9,500ft) on the Suncoast side-ETX plaza, compared to 0.8km (2,600ft) on the Western Exwy with central-ETX. It’s no very big deal in a rural environment, but on an urban motorways that to make it truly safe express the toll plaza has to be very long and so takes up a lot more space.

Both these ETX arrangements in central Florida seem likely to work very well so far as we could see. The Suncoast Parkway has a very wide right of way. It is especially nicely landscaped with great attention to blending the road into the landscape and vegetation. It has a biking/walking path the whole 40km (24mi) of its length, extra long bridging over waterways and wild areas to provide for wildlife to cross safely. The long ETX-swings around the outside provide for the cash plaza in the middle to be rather like a central service plaza. The great length of the diverge and merge sections will make for safe travel.

The Western Exwy central-ETX acknowledges the future primacy of electronic tolling. And though it doesn’t show too well in a plan, to a motorist the diversion swinging off to the side to cash-plazas is a definite ‘announcement’ of the imminence of the plaza and an invitation to slow appropriately. At present the 2x2- travel lanes plus shoulder continue right through the middle under the service bridge. There is space in the middle for an extra two ETX lanes. Toll collectors moving from the plaza admin building on the west side to the eastern cash lanes can take an elevator to the walk bridge over the roadways. It is a cleanlined truss of tubular steel and a fabric roof. At the sides it is open to the weather except for a tight black chainlink. The structure also ‘announces’ the toll plaza and provides a structure for equipment and signs to be hung from, and is designed so adjustments can be made to antennas from above through floor panels.

Jorge Figueredo, OOCEA director of operations says the Western Exwy toll plaza is a great success and is the model for other express operations in the Orlando system. He says OOCEA has favored the central design ever since electronic tolling began. Rebuilds of busy toll plazas with central ETX are in design. CEO Hal Worrall has said he hopes to have all the mainline plazas highway speed in about 8 years.

FDOT has no ETX at its most recently opened toll road, the Polk Parkway that loops south around Lakeland, midway between Tampa and Orlando. But the mainline Polk toll plazas are laid out with a wide open space in the middle so central-ETX could be added in the future. The toll superintendent there pointed out that even the lane numbering of the existing cash toll lanes omits numbers to allow for future central-ETX lanes.

Delaware DOT’s toll people are taking ETX very seriously. They were the first in the northeast to get ETX into operation - on the new toll plaza on the DE-1 toll road at Biddles Corner that opened Nov 99. The central-ETX has been such a hit, they have decided to convert their two other toll plazas to ETX. Next will be the Delaware Turnpike (I-95) mainline plaza near the Maryland state line, then another on DE-1 near the capital Dover. The Turnpike I-95 plaza has 20 lanes and handles an average 90k veh/day though at vacations times that can go to 135k.

P. J. Wilkins the Delaware director of toll operations wrestled with whether it might be possible to retain the flexibility of reversible lanes along with ETX. But he says: “It’s the accepted rule that fast traffic takes the center lanes and the electronic toll traffic is fast traffic. I can’t see any alternative to central-ETX, unless you are going to build a tunnel underneath it or a bridge over the top (for I-95 ETX) and I don’t think we are going to need to do anything like that.”

Delaware will be letting contracts for the design of the ETX rebuild of the I-95 plaza in the spring. (Contacts Kevin Thibault, Florida Turnpike District FDOT 407 532 3999x3080, Jorge Figueredo OOCEA 407 425 8606, P J Wilkins, Delaware Turnpike 302 631 4000)

CORRECTION: Last issue we reported that the Suncoast Parkway would only do electronic tolling at reduced speed (25 or 30mph). We were told this very firmly by a Turnpike District official and a Turnpike consultant. They even gave us the rationale – consistency with speed limits at retrotitted ET on other tollroads nearby. They, and we, were misinformed. Designed for full highway speed tolling the three mainline toll plazas on the Suncoast WILL be used for highway speed or ETX, we are now assured.