"We wuz first" - on claim Melbourne CityLink was the first all electronic tollroad - MISQUOTE & APOLOGY

Guess it's an understandable expression of pride, the desire to say "we wuz first..." Thus the outgoing chief executive of Transurban Kim Edwards was quoted in a Sydney newspaper (Dec 22) as saying "When we did CityLink it was the world's first fully electronic toll road..." This claim has often been made in Australia so often it probably slips off the tongue without much thought. An engineer there made the claim in a book on CityLink.

However Ken Daley exec-VP international at Transurban emailed us: "Kim (Edwards) has been misquoted. (He) said it was the first all electronic toll road in Australia! As you would appreciate, (Our chief executive) is very careful in this type of statement and I was present at the time of both the investor presentations and the media briefing and heard him in full. He never claimed CityLink was the first in the world as he knows 407ETR has that position."

CORRECTION & APOLOGY: We first attributed this misquote to the Sydney Morning Herald. In fact it came from another newspaper in Sydney. We somehow got the newspaper names detached in downloading articles from their websites. This was a bad mistake of ours which we regret. We apologize to the Herald. We did email the Herald news editor Dec 27 after Transurban contested the quote and they got back to us today - Jan 2)

We accept Ken Daly's statement that the quote was wrong.

We've gone back through a number of Transurban presentations and speeches on CityLink and they generally use the formulation that CityLink was the "first a;; electronic road in Australia" or that was "one of the world's first" all electronic tollroads.

Both statements are accurate.

In the middle the 1990s at least four all electronic toll systems were being built in parallel - in the US, Canada, Singapore and Australia. All were major accomplishments and pioneering efforts since they were mounted independently of one another. Canadian, American, Australian, Singaporean, Japanese, Swedish and French engineerswere all involved in separate but similar pioneering efforts. All did well.

Melbourne's toll system was planned in the mid 1990s at a time when there was no all-electronic tollroad in operation. It was developed independently of any other by Australian, Swedish and French engineers. And although there were major problems and delays in getting the back office side side operating right (due an incompetent American contractor), when those problems were solved it was arguably the best all electronic tollroad in terms of the proportion of tolls collected.

How does this relate to the others in time?

December 1995

91 Express Lanes in Orange county California with a toll system developed by French (Cofiroute) and American engineers began tolling December 27 1995. It was the world's first road to collect all the tolls on a stretch of normal highway at full highway speed using transponders. It was cashless.

Its sponsors have claimed 91 Express was the world's first all electronic tollroad.

You have to have a transponder to drive on the 91X. No cash collected.

Carpoolers (HOV vehicles) are monitored visually by an observer in a booth. The human observer checks vehicles directed into a special lane alongside the toll lanes. That detracts considerably from the all electronic claim.

91 Express Lanes are arguably not a full tollroad either. They are tolled lanes in the middle of a freeway, and they have been called a simple 'pipe' because they take traffic in one end, toll it, and let it out the other - no interchanges.

Maybe they qualify as the first all electronic tollroad, maybe not. It can be argued both ways.

October 1997

407ETR in Toronto Canada is indisputably a selfsufficient tollroad with many interchanges. Its first segment opened to traffic June 7 1997 and they began collecting tolls there October 14 1997.

They are indisputably an all-electronic tollroad with no cash collection or need to slow or go in a separate lane for tolling. The toll system was developed by Hughes Traffic Management Systems of Fullerton California, now part of Raytheon.

Toll collection is from gantries spanning multiple lanes not just reading transponders like 91 Express Lanes but using cameras to read license plates - the first example of video tolling.

September 1998

In September 1998 the Land Transport Authority in Singapore introduced the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) scheme to collect tolls on the entry to a central area and at single points on several expressways. That system designed by Mitsubishi of Japan along with Singapore engineers is an all-electronic toll collection system in an open road setting. To be sure it isn't a single tollroad. It is tolling at a set of toll points on different roads.

The charge collected isn't called a toll. It's a congestion charge levied during limited hours. But the system has all the elements of all-electronic tolling - transponder reads at full highway speed across multiple lanes, cameras used to detect and record violators, and no cash collection.

January 2000

Melbourne CityLink's first western portion only opened to traffic August 15 1999 at which time 407ETR had been collecting tolls, all-electronic, for 22 months.

Melbourne CityLink's toll system was developed by different engineers and quite independently. Its components were developed and the system was designed by the time 407ETR opened.

But CityLink began tolling 26 months later than the Toronto tollroad on January 3, 2000. Melbourne CityLink arguably worked better than 407ETR in its early years. It collected more of the tolls due and it had fewer customer service complaints.

So CityLink was second if you dismiss 91 Express Lanes and the Singapore ERP as not really a full tollroad, or fourth if you are talking about the all electronic toll technology.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-12-22 REVISED 2007-12-31 Correction to newspaper attribution 2008-01-02