Florida’s SunPass nears state IO

Florida DOT says that it should finally reach its goal of statewide interoperability (IO) for electronic tolling May 21. Its office of toll operations completed deployment of its SunPass electronic toll (ET) system on the whole of the turnpike March 21 when it began SunPass operations on the trip toll section of the mainline between Lantana near the coast and Kissimmee just south of Orlando. SunPass is more complicated than most US ET systems, making considerable use of transponder memory and therefore of writebacks to the transponder from the plaza equipment. That created major delays on the trip toll or ‘ticket’ segment. Orlando’s independent OOCEA switched out all its venerable Mark IV bumper-mounted transponders for windshield mounted Amtech/TransCore tags that can be read by SunPass lane equipment. OOCEA retained its conventional centralized toll management system with no significant write-backs to its own transponders, which it calls E-PASS. The equipment is now interoperable. TransCore has finally managed to get OOCEA to handle Sunpass transponders the FDOT-way. But some of the independents say the system still has major shortcomings as compared to more straightforward designs elsewhere in the US.