Atlantic City Expressway defer design work on ORT+cash plaza to consider cashless all electronic tolling

South Jersey Transportation Authority (SJTA) have decided to hold off on detailed engineering design work on modernizing their Egg Harbor mainline toll plaza (Mile Marker 17) in order to study cashless all electronic tolling (AET) for their Atlantic City Expressway. They were working on a concept of highway speed, open road tolling down the middle, plus new cash toll lanes at the sides - duplicating what they've achieved at their other mainline plaza, the Pleasantville Plaza (Mile Marker 3) on the edge of Atlantic City.

Sam Donelson SJTA chief engineer says the authority decided in December that before they went any further on Egg Harbor modernization they need to examine other options including the phaseout of cash collection and a move to all electronic highway speed tolling. And how would they go about such a transition, and what should they do in the meantime?

Traffic Technologies Inc of New Windsor NY have been hired to conduct the study of future toll options for SJTA.

Donelson says TTI are looking at the costs and benefits of several options:

- full service longterm open road electronic tolling plus cash lanes (ORT+cash)

- open road electronic tolling plus short-term cash

- cashless all electronic highway speed tolling (AET)

Egg Harbor Toll Plaza presently has 13 mixed mode toll lanes, several reversible.

The fullservice plan would provide two toll lanes plus a full width shoulder in each direction for open road electronic tolling and about seven toll lanes each direction mixed mode - cash plus transponder.

The Expressway only has two travel lanes westbound in this segment but a third laning project is getting under way. There are already three travel lanes eastbound.

The open road tolling would be designed to go to 3 lanes each direction when the travel lanes are three in each direction.

This version costing $20m to $25m includes a three span walkway bridge, one span over each direction of cash tolling and a central span over the highway speed electronic tolling. There would be new toll booths, new manual toll equipment.

A variant to be examined would be a staff and equipment tunnel rather than the overhead walkway.

Possible interim solution or quick move to cashless AET

However given the high cost of full ORT+cash and trends to abandon cash toll collection many places SJTA wants to look at lower capital outlay solutions including a quick move to all electronic tolling, and an interim solution that allows open road tolling but keeps some cash for a few years, Donelson says.

The interim solution would do without the expensive overhead walkway or tunnel. The cash plazas might be split - one direction located a short distance away - and staff moved from one side to the other by a shuttle van. Five to ten years off cash collection might be abandoned altogether.

Pleasantville

Meanwhile the partially modernized Pleasantville plaza works well, the open road tolling down the middle having relieved congestion on this busiest stretch of the expressway between Atlantic City and the Garden State Parkway. A $10m job, also done with TTI the toll system engineers, Pleasantville provides 2+2 lanes of open road tolling and an Idris smart loops system for vehicle detection, tracking and classification. There are nine lanes providing manual toll collection, 4 westbound and 5 eastbound.

The most spectacular aspect of the project which opened in 2005 is the overhead enclosed walkway which has a single span of 74m (243ft). The bridge was fabricated in eight sections in Denver CO, and trucked to south Jersey. Just off the Expressway the eight segments were welded together. On the night of April 12-13 2005 the Expressway was closed to traffic and a crane used to hoist the walkway bridge into position on the abutment structure at each end.

The Pleasantville work was designed as a first stage of a two stage project, the second phase of which involves mounting open road equipment on the walkway and servicing it from there.

The plan for this second stage also was to modernize the manual toll lanes.

With possible abandonment of cash collection the question for SJTA is whether to proceed with that.

Donelson says he hopes to have some results of the studies being done with TTI by March.

OTHER CASHLESS MOVES: Other US toll agencies working to go cashless wioth all electronic tolling are:

- North Texas Tollway Authority in Dallas

- Port Authority NYNJ at its three Hudson River crossings and three Staten Island bridges

- E470 in Denver CO

- Miami Dade Expressway Authority

In Texas all new tollroads are expected to be cashless.

In Florida the Turnpike Enterprise is installing no new cash lanes. New interchanges are AET.

Maryland's new Inter County Connector now under construction will be AET.

North Carolina Turnpike has decided all its projects will be AET.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-01-17