Puerto Rico court finds irregularity but no wrongdoing in cash toll award, orders rebid

An appeals court in Puerto Rico has said the state toll authority ACT must rebid a contract it awarded to United Toll Systems for cash toll colelction. The award was contested by TransCore which asked the court to give it the contract. So the result was only a partial win for TransCore.

None of the bidders complied with the filing requirements for doing business in PR it was discovered after the selection.

The toll authority having evaluated UTS as producing the best-value proposal then assigned the contract to UTS after it had corrected the filing.

The court did not find any major wrongdoing in the handling of the case by ACT so the toll authority seems free to have a third go at awarding the contract to UTS.

UTS was the most expensive bid, but ACT said UTS was the only one to offer a proposal that would end "leakage" or thievery.

TransCore already operates electronic tolling under the brand AutoExpreso on the island's several tollroads, which in aggregate do almost a million tr5ansactions a day.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-06-19