North Texas Tollway to go all-electronic - cash collection being phased out over 33 months

North Texas Tollway Authority's board voted today to phase-out cash toll collection and move to all-electronic toll collection (AETC) - meaning future tolls will by transponder account or video imaging of license plates. All toll booths and coin machines will be removed.

This will be the first AETC conversion in the US, and one of the first in the world of a major established metro area toll system. NTTA started all-cash, proceeded through single lane roll-through retrofitted transponder tolling, introduced multi-lane open road tolling in the middle of cash toll plazas, and now it phases out cash altogether.

Net present value of cost savings 2011 through 2045 is put at $350m to $507m. Capital savings during this period will be $124m, and revenue losses $159m, for net savings of $315m to $472m.

Under the conversion plan adopted by the NTTA board the new all-electronic system will be fully implemented by May 2010.

A staff presentation said that gross revenue will be lower without cash collection - about 2% according to Wilbur Smith Assoc producing that present value loss for the whole period of $159m. The capital savings are from cancellation of planned reconstruction of cash toll plazas and in cancellation of cash collection at planned new toll plazas. (see table nearby)

400 toll collector and money handling jobs will disappear, but the conversion plan provides for those who stay on to work in enlarged customer service and other jobs at extensions of the toll system.

Annual staff costs will be reduced by $7m to $10m/year and other operating costs another $3m to $4.5m from 2011 when the new AETC is fully in place.

A slide shown at the board meeting portrays new jobs from tollroad extensions as more or less offsetting the phasedown of cash collectors and money handlers. (see nearby)

The NTTA is non-union, but the NTTA statement says: "It is the Authority’s goal to successfully place all toll collection and vault employees by the end of the migration process through a series of Human Resources initiatives."

Rick Herrington, NTTA Deputy Executive Director is quoted: “The decision to become an all-electronic-toll-collection system was carefully reviewed. We recognize this will affect our employees who work at our tollbooths and other toll collection areas. After looking at the potential benefits including improving air quality and increasing mobility in North Texas, the NTTA Board made a decision that provides the highest benefit to our customers and to our organization.”

A number of new tollroads are AETC including 91 Express Lanes and other toll lanes within freeways, the Westpark Tollway in Houston, SH121 run by TxDOT (for now), the Reversible Express Lanes in Tampa and Tyler Loop 49 TX, and the new Inter County Connector starting construction in Maryland. Singapore, Canada, Australia, Chile, Israel, London, Stockholm are among the AETC startups.

Schedule

The conversion plan is as follows:

2008: ramp plazas on the Dallas North Tollway and the Mountain Creek Lake Bridge

2009: mainline plazas on the Dallas North Tollway (DNT) plus Addison Airport Toll Tunnel

2010: mainline and ramp plazas on the Pres George Bush Turnpike (PGBT)

About 80% of NTTA customers have transponders now. NTTA was the first toller in the US to introduce electronic tolling - in mid-1989 on the Dallas North Tollway. TransCore, then Amtech undertook to pay all expenses and charge 5c/toll, collected or uncollected, and to terminate the system at any time NTTA ordered. NTTA bought the system and had it further developed.

NTTA already has all electronic toll collection at their Wycliff Avenue mainline toll plaza (aka Plaza #1). That was implemented quickly in January this year because abrupt merges caused by road construction lane closures were stifling throughput and producing several miles of backups. When cash collection was abolished and all traffic put through central open road toll lanes the congestion virtually disappeared.

The brand ZipCash was adopted for all-electronic tolling. Transponders are read in the normal way. Motorists without a transponder have their license plate read by cameras in a video toll and a toll invoice is sent to the motor registry address associated with that license plate. Video tolls are the same as cash tolls, usually a premium of a third over the cash toll.

All new NTTA projects will be all-electronic. This includes the PGBT Eastern Extension (TX78 in Garland to I-30), the Lewisville Lake Toll Bridge and northern extensions of the Dallas North Tollway. In 2006 NTTA collected $191m in tolls from 373m toll transactions, 1.02m/day average.

A contractor selection will begin immediately with the aim of starting construction in 2008.

COMMENT: Once again North Texas boldly embraces new technology and leaps in ahead of other US toll agencies. This all-electronic looks like the future of tolling.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-08-15