TransCore vigorously appealing award of Puerto Rico contract to UTS

TransCore has filed a motion in the court of appeals in San Juan calling for a freeze on the award of a contract for cash toll systems upgrades and seven years of operations by the Puerto Rico toll authority ACT to rival UTS. They called the procedures followed by ACT, the PR toll authority - cancellation of the competitive procurement followed soon after by the announcement of a negotiated contract with UTS - "the most shameless way of justifying the unjustifiable."

TransCore says the procedures followed reek of "favoritism and arbitrariness." They say the faxed letter to bidders announcing the cancellation contains errors of fact about the proposals that are sufficient in themselves to warrant blocking the award of the contrtact to UTS.

The toll authority, they said at one point, showed its "ignorance" of industry practices in toll collection.

The company has mobilized a number of lawyers, lobbyists and others on the Puerto Rico case to reverse the award of the contract to UTS.

Over seven years the UTS contract is worth about $69m. ACT has said UTS offered the only solution that would stop "leakage" (stealing) estimated to be costing $35m/year. This they said was justification for choosing the highest of the three bids.

TransCore installed the electronic toll system on ACT tollroads using the eGo sticker tags in 2004, and in September 2007 got a five year extension of their electronic toll operations contract. The contract also provided for putting electronic toll readers in extra toll lanes and supply of an extra 500k sticker tags.

Puerto Rico has five toll expressways about 300km (under 200 miles) long, with 26 toll plazas and nearly 200 lanes. The number of sticker tag transponders sold passed the half million mark in PR a year ago. About 35% of toll transactions are paid by transponder overall and at some toll plazas in peak hours the proportion is 65%.

InTrans has provided cash toll collection systems, vehicle classification treadles and other conventional lane equipment. There has been criticism of the condition of these systems.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-04-10