Triborough Authority drops TransCore for Telvent Caseta on ET maintenance

New York's Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) has dropped TransCore in favor of Telvent Caseta for a longstanding electronic toll (ET) system hardware maintenance contract. The board of directors of the MTA, the Triborough's parent state authority which also runs major rail and bus services in New York approved the contract award to Telvent Caseta at their meeting Thursday July 24.

Caseta (before their acquisition by Telvent) did software system work for TBTA to set up the first electronic toll system (E-ZPass) in New York City alongside TransCore as the hardware installer and maintainer (the equipment was Mark IV) around 1994-95. The first TBTA facility to go live with E-ZPass was the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in October 1995. Until this week TBTA had regularly renewed the contracts of both TransCore and Caseta every several years on the same split of work.

In the latest procurement process for what was formally called "Maintenance and Repair of Electronic Toll Registry System" TransCore again bid for the hardware side but Caseta, now Telvent Caseta, put in two proposals:

(1) for the software maintenance

(2) for both software maintenance and hardware maintenance

TBTA decided several weeks ago in favor of (2) - terminating TransCore's role.

TransCore was notified and initially objected to the decision. But after negotiations they wrote a letter to TBTA saying they accepted the termination of their role and would not pursue a formal protest. At that point TBTA went to the MTA board for formal approval of granting the combined software and hardware maintenance contract to Telvent Caseta.

The contract is worth $28.6m and is for 4 years, renewable for two extra years (called 4+1+1).

Other work

Telvent Caseta also has toll system work for Central Texas RMA having designed and installed a TransCore sticker tag toll system with two toll plazas and a ramp plaza pair on the 183A tollroad in the northwest of Austin. They are now converting the system to all-electronic tolling (AET), and are working on the second CTRMA tollroad in the Austin area, US290. They recently won a contract in Rhode Island to do the state toll bridge with electronic tolling.

Telvent has been described as the IBM of Spain - an all services IT company. Caseta was a closely held private company which worked for many years with TBTA only. Telvent Caseta has offices in New York and Austin TX.

TransCore is the giant of toll systems in the US and via Amtech a predecessor company the original pioneer of electronic tolling in north America. Headquartered near Harrisburg PA, it has major facilities in Albuquerque NM, San Diego and Dallas and is the only US company which supplies a full range of electronic toll equipment and does system design and integration, maintenance and customer service.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-07-25