Cash toll collection planned at Maine's new $35m southern toll plaza

Cash toll collection is still kicking. In Maine the Turnpike Authority is pushing ahead with a planned replacement to their busiest toll plaza - the mainline plaza in York at Mile Marker 7, seven miles north of the New Hampshire border. And they plan a new $32m to $35m nineteen toll lanes plaza – 2+ 2 open road electronic toll (ORT) lanes through the middle and fifteen stop-to-pay toll lanes, eight southbound, seven northbound, straddling the ORT lanes.

They can't rebuild at the existing York plaza location because everything there is wrong - built in 1969 it's in a swamp with poor foundations for the plaza structures, and on a curve in the roadway so sight lines are bad. Drivers unfamiliar with the plaza don't get a clear view of available toll lanes so they back up behind a few lanes leaving others with unused capacity.

There are nearby ramps and a weaving problem.

Located at a low spot trucks have to climb and so accelerate away slowly from the plaza. Expansion of capacity by widening is difficult to justify because it is wetland on either side.

Last August at the peak of summer traffic flows York Plaza averaged 67k transactions a day (year round daily average is 46k), well beyond capacity needed for decent levels of service. Backups are notorious in the tourist season. More throughout is badly needed.

Studies, permitting and public consultation is underway for the new plaza.

Four alternative sites

They recently narrowed the number of potential alternative sites for what is formally called the Southern Toll Plaza Replacement Project to four from 14. The existing toll plaza is at mile marker 7.3, or 7.3 miles (12km) from the New Hampshire border. The short list comprises sites at mile markers 8.7, 9.9, 11.3 and 13.2.

At one of these four the Turnpike Authority will have to acquire enough land either side of the highway right of way (around 53m or 175ft) to accommodate the typical sausage shaped footprint about 800m (2600ft) long were the taper begins and ends. At its maximum the sausage footprint needed will be 135m (430ft) wide. Up to 39m (127ft) will have to be acquired each side of the regular highway right of way.

Trouble everywhere

Trouble is there's trouble at all four potential locations. It may look sleepy and leafy but all along each side of the Turnpike there are people's homes spotted around. The four sites require acquisition and removal of between two and eight houses each and many other partial land takes.

Beyond that no one wants a toll plaza to arrive in their neighborhood. It evokes images of vast acres of pavement, the squeaking of brakes, idling traffic and the murmur of accelerating engines. And the smell of tailpipe emissions.

The local newspapers are full of reports of angry groups of people meeting to oppose the site near them. And there are denunciations of the Turnpike Authority as the big bully. As one resident is quoted they are "very wealthy, very powerful and they don't report to anyone."

A lot of this rhetoric is overblown even paranoid, for example, accusations that the Turnpike Authority has already decided where the new toll plaza will be and that the consultation and selection process is a fraud. And there's the specter of eminent domain being used to seize land. It is indeed a power that the Turnpike has, but is only used as a last resort.

The Turnpike is holding public meetings and providing handouts explaining what it's doing, and it has materials on its website. The Turnpike has two experienced and able public information officers in Dan Paradee and Bruce Pelletier.

Why not go cashless?

This seems a classic case of where cashless tolling would make sense - the combination of transponder and video. An all electronic tolling point would not require any land acquisition because the gantries would fit within the existing right of way. Only an access driveway and gate would be needed for technicians to get to the gantries and roadside equipment.

The capital costs would be reduced about three-quarters to say $8m or $9m vs $32m to $35m. The savings would certainly be $20m.

Pelletier tells us they did consider going the cashless option. He says it was rejected because their clientele are motorists from all over the northeast and collecting video tolls from such a diverse and dispersed group of customers is not feasible.

He says cashless tolling will work with commuters but not at their southern plaza which caters to interstate and visitor traffic. The Inter Agency Group (IAG) for E-ZPass doesn't have in place the arrangements to handle video tolling, he says.

COMMENT: The IAG is going to be forced to work out arrangements for interchange of video captured data within the next three or four years. Two of the largest IAG toll authorities Port Authority NYNJ and the MTA Bridges and Tunnels are both virtually committed to going cashless, although officially they are only studying it. In order to make cashless work, and meanwhile just to improve violations collections they will be using their influence and skills within the IAG to allow the whole E-ZPass network to exchange camera acquired data.

It is true as Pelletier says that the major systems either cashless now (Tampa's El, Westpark Tollway, the various HOT or toll express lanes projects, TX121) and those going cashless (NTTA in Dallas, E470 in Denver, Miami Dade, ICC Maryland, NC) are commuter roads with a known clientele. It is true, as Maine Turnpike says, that going cashless with their visitor and interstate clientele would be problematic now in 2008.

But their $30m+ new toll plaza and its 15 cash lanes is not going to be operational for three or four years at a minimum. By about 2012 the PANYNJ will likely be introducing cashless all electronic tolling. It has large volumes of non-commuter pass through traffic especially over its biggest facility the George Washington bridge (total traffic about 300k/day). PANYNJ will need arrangements with the other IAG members to collect video tolls across the whole IAG region - precisely what Maine Turnpike will need for cashless at its new southern toll point.

We doubt this new toll plaza can be justified financially, or that the political fight for it is worth the ill will it is generating. The Turnpike should freeze the site selection process for the new southern toll plaza and switch to study more closely PANYNJ plans for going cashless and how other cashless systems manage remote toll collection.

PERSONAL: The longest standing and biggest of the cashless systems is 407ETR in Toronto. On every trip I've made to Toronto's cashless 407ETR tollroad their video tolling has - unfortunately - managed to find and bill me here in Maryland. If those Canadians, not even able to benefit by IAG collaboration, can find and bill me here south of the Mason Dixon Line, so can Maine. They can also benefit by rapidly improving video toll technology and experience and the likelihood of IAG arrangements being developed for mutual support in video tolling.

BACKGROUND: Maine Turnpike was the pioneer of toll revenue bonds, being the first tollroad in the US to finance its construction solely with bonds sold on the security of prospective toll revenues. It's first stretch of 72km (45 miles) of toll expressway from the New Hampshire state border to Portland opened in Dec 1947 ahead of almost all the other state turnpikes and tollroads except for Pennsylvania. The Turnpike was extended by 106km (66 miles) to US1 in Falmouth in 1955.

The Turnpike now does about 80m/yr transactions (average 210k/day) raising $90m annual revenues at some 21 tolling points, just two mainline and the rest side plazas.

Maine had a quirky dual frequency active transponder system by AT/Comm from the mid-1990s onward. This orphan technology was replaced by a Mark IV IAG-compliant E-ZPass system in February 2005. Also the Turnpike went from a ticket based trip toll system to a point toll system earlier. That plus the cash need to round rates to the quarter has left a legacy of equity anomalies in per-mile toll rates.

The Turnpike did a difficult but very necessary third laning and rebuild of its busy southern 70km (45 miles) several years back, hugely improving throughput and safety. The  southern toll plaza likewise needs modernization.

By the standards of other toll authorities in the northeast cash is still ratehr heavily used in toll payments - cash and transponder modes are around 50/50.

HNTB is doing the engineering work for Maine Turnpike Authority for the new toll plaza.

For more on toll plaza plans:

http://www.maineturnpike.com/pdfs/MeetingHandout_02-2008.pdf

http://www.maineturnpike.com/html/news/STPRP.html

Pictures of cashless tolling gantries below:

TOLLROADSnews 2008-03-12