Atlantic City Expressway to sell E-ZPass "to go" kits, cashless tolling study ongoing

South Jersey Transportation Authority (SJTA) operator of the Atlantic City Expressway (ACE) is  moving to increase the use of transponders by pushing the handy packaged kits called "E-ZPass On The Go".

Quite widely used for several years by larger toll agencies these cater to impulse buying. Without filling out a form motorists can get the transponder and $25 or so of prepaid tolls and take it with them. In order to activate the account however they must go online to provide their details to the toller - name, address, make, model and license plate(s) of vehicle(s), card number for account top-up etc.

On the Atlantic City Expressway E-ZPass On The Go kits will be sold at the Farley Service Plaza for $29, which will provide $25 of prepaid tolls.

Local reports linked E-ZPass kits to cashless or all-electronic tolling. But the authority has made no decisions on that. Spokesman Sharon Gordon told us that the study of AET is a few months from completion.

Traffic Technologies Inc of New Windsor NY were asked by SJTA to conduct the study late last year, as we reported in January  - http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3350

Transponders presently account for about 60% of toll transactions on the Expressway and increasing this will be helpful regardless of decisions on cashless.

The Expressway presently has cash collection on the sides and open road tolling through the center of their Pleasantville Toll Plaza on the outskirts of Atlantic City. They were planning to replicate that at their other mainline plaza at Egg Harbor but have deferred work until they work out whether they need to keep cash.

The first cashless toll plaza on the ACE will be a pair of toll points on a new pair of loop ramps at Interchange 17 (NJ50) near the Egg Harbor toll plaza.

The new ramps facing east will be located just east of the toll plaza and tolling will be needed to prevent the ramps being used to avoid the toll.

see http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3011

PUZZLE: How this place came to be misnamed Egg Harbor. There's no harbor here. It's 20km (13 miles) from the nearest sea water.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-07-31