MAINE Maine Turnpike goes e-toll, abandons tickets

MAINE

Maine Turnpike goes e-toll, abandons tickets

The Maine Turnpike threw the switch on its electronic toll collection system just after midnight Sept 16 becoming, by our count, the 18th major toll system in the US to implement ETC. At the same time the pike abandoned its ticket system of tolling and converted to point tolling at mainline and ramp plazas. The turnpike estimates that the changes will reduce driver toll stops by about half and says e-toll lanes will have four times the throughout of ticket toll lanes. It expects major cost savings. Fulltime equivalent toll collectors have been cut from 400 to 300 with both attrition and layoffs.

Maine chose the Boston area AT/Comm to supply equipment and implement the ETC system. AT/Comm equipment is in use on the large Illinois tollway system (but is due to be replaced with Mark IV equipment early in 1998) and on two toll facilities in Australia. The transponders are active transmitters like Mark IV and Hughes equipment.

The installation in Maine proved difficult and the turnpike had to postpone the startup date several times. Original startup was scheduled for Dec 96. The system in Maine uses the name Transpass (a change from the first announced name of E-System) and the tags have an alpha-numeric display to send simple messages to the driver. They feature a beeper and a button for the driver to query the unit for an account balance. The unit has a memory allowing the last 100 transactions to be stored and can be segregated into as many as 18 different accounts if this were needed. It uses encryption algorithms to safeguard data.

Mainers were not difficult to sell on the system. The pike had 25,000 transponders out with the public before the system was running. Indeed because of delays in opening some of the account information encoded in the e-tags became obsolete and on start up displayed an “Expired” message on the display. The pike used its messaging system to then automatically update the tags as they approached the active system for the first time.

Dan Paradee saysthat at last the system is working well. Major difficulty has been in accomodating the different types of accounts the pike offers — commercial, a per-trip debit and a quarterly pass system that offers unlimited trips. The pass system that previously used tickets offers a discount as deep as 65% and is now only available via an e-toll account so tags are flying out the door. Over 1,000 a week.

The Maine Turnpike is a 140km late-1940s mostly 2x2 lane system which starts just beyond the southern tip of the state near the New Hampshire state line. It is the only mwy standard connection the state has with the rest of the US and as far as Portland, the major city of the state, it is designated I-95, the great way that runs almost the length of the east coast from Coral Gables Florida to the Canadian border at Houlton, ME. Anti-highway groups managed to stop construction of a new barrier toll plaza on the mainline near Scarborough on the approach to Portland, which was an integral part of the the turnpike’s scheme to convert to point tolling. The plaza was essential for collecting point tolls in an equitable manner on the southern part of the pike. All the old exit ramp plazas (where tickets used to be handed to attendants for payment) have been reconfigured to simple exit lanes enabling the inbound toll plazas to be widened to increase their capacity. Gantry-borne readers ensure the extra tolls for transponder users, but the lack of extra cash collection means that Portland(6ICs)-NH-line vehicles pay the same cash tolls as those who travel just one IC-NH.

Lousy with sweaty Borstonians & Nooyorkas: The pike gets crowded weekends and summers because the state attracts large numbers of vacationers from the New York area and Boston in addition to regular traffic and commuters in the MA/NH/ME coastal corridor. The Maine state line is only 90km from the center of Boston. In 1995 the pike did a limited congestion pricing experiment by providing discount toll coupons giving free travel in off-peak hours Fridays and Sundays. The experiment showed some promise in diverting of traffic from the peak, but the results were minimal — because the legislature intervened to prevent any toll premiums in peak hours.

Beyond Portland the pike has a short northern bypass spur to link to an untolled I-95 which follows the coast. The mainline of the pike goes a bit inland to serve the Lewiston area (designated I-495) and ends at the state capital Augusta where I-95 joins it again. It has 18 interchanges in all. The turnpike took 43m tolls last year and raised $41m in revenue.

Major expansion in train is the widening of the pike to 2x3-lanes to the major city of Portland (see pXX). Major future opportunity for extending the system lies in the need for a higher standard road than the present ME-9 between Bangor ME and Lepreau near Saint John New Brunswick — 120km. Now that the toll Highway 104 has opened in Nova Scotia (see pXX), there is a mwy standard highway all the way from the great port of Halifax Nova Scotia to Saint John NB, and the Bangor ME-Lepreau NB section is a missing link between Halifax and Boston. Maine and the maritime provinces are a delightful summer recreational area for escapees from summer humidity in the northeastern US and the port of Halifax is a huge productive one which needs better trucking connections to the NE US and through upper NY state to Toronto and Detroit.

The BANGOR DAILY NEWS (editorial 9/30) and Michael Saxl a ME congressman are campaigning not only for the upgrade of ME-9 eastward from Bangor to Calais at the New Brunswick border but upgrades westward to make a new highway linking southern New Brunswick to Montreal right through central Maine. This would require an c125km link from I-95 at either Waterville or Pittsfield via Skowhegan in central Maine crossing the Quebec border at Coburn Gore and another 75km in Canada to the Quebec motorway system in Sherbrooke. The current highway linking the maritime provinces to Montreal and Toronto follows the St Lawrence northward and is much longer than through ME. (Contact Dan Paradee Maine ‘pike 207 871 7771)