E470 to end cash collection in July 2009, camera tolls to start Jan 1

E470 tollroad in the eastern part of Denver CO will become fully electronic and cease cash toll collection July 4 2009.They've coined the term 'Non Stop Tolling' for all-electronic toll collection. First stage of the process will be introduction of camera tolling brandnamed 'License Plate Toll' on Jan 1 2009 under which motorists without transponders will be allowed to whiz through the highspeed electronic toll lanes previously reserved to those with transponders.

For another six months there will continue to be cash collection alongside.

The two-phase approach and the schedule were approved at this month's meeting of the E-470 Public Highway Authority's (E470PHA) board of directors.

Cost of the changeover is put at $4.9m by Dave Kristick, director of operations who says the budget won't be formally approved for this until November.

Under 'License Plate Toll' vehicles will be photographed front and back for the toll system to extract the license plate number, so that by reference to motor registry data, the owner can be billed by mail. (Also known as video tolling, V-toll, or in Florida I-toll for image-tolls.)

After July 4 when cash collection ceases the road's toll booths and automatic coin machines will be removed and all tolling will be on the mainline under the existing gantries that provide highway speed electronic tolling.

110 toll collection jobs to go

Toll collectors, fulltime and part-time presently number 110 and are hired by a toll services contractor. Some could move to customer service jobs, but others will have to find work outside the tollroad.

Built for highway speed tolling

E470 has five mainline toll plazas all originally built for highway speed electronic tolling down the middle and cash collection to the sides. Between the mainline toll plazas there are spread sixteen pairs of ramp toll points, each with a transponder toll lane and an automatic coin machine lane.

The highway is 74km (46 miles) in length, has 23 interchanges, does an average 150k toll transactions/day, and grossed $94m in toll revenue last financial year.

Tolls on E470 are 21c/mile (13c/km) for cars, so driving the length of the tollroad is just shy of $10.

The road has a total of 106 toll lanes at present: 20 express toll lanes on the mainline (5x4) and the rest mainline boothed lanes, and unmanned ramp lanes.

Vehicle classification

At the mainline toll plazas and in interchange toll lanes Idris Loops have been installed in the pavement to count axles and delineate vehicles at speed.

At present the 32 ramp toll points (16 pairs) have no vehicle classification so vehicles are tolled the same rate regardless of class. The authority plans to install smart loops at the ramp toll locations in order to be able to charge there by class too - in the future.

Northwest Parkway

The Northwest Parkway a 15km (9.6 mile) tollroad built by a separate set of cities and counties is under longterm concession at the business level to Brisa, the Portugal-based international tollroad operator. But its operations, especially toll collection and customer service are performed under contract by E470PHA whose present toll services contractor is Mile High Toll Services, a subsidiary of Parsons Brinckerhoff.

As far as the motorist is concerned the Northwest Parkway is just an extension of E470. It has one mainline toll plaza and two pairs of ramp toll points.

The two constitute a continuous tollroad of 89km (56 miles) with six mainline toll points as well as 18 pairs of toll points on ramps.

Northwest Parkway has not announced any plan to follow E470 to all-electronic tolling, but it seems unlikely they will maintain manual collection and different rules from E470. Once E470 cease treating motorists without transponders as legitimate users of the express lanes in the center it will be difficult for NW Parkway to treat them as violators.

EXpressToll brand

EXpressToll is the brandname for electronic toll collection in the area. It uses a 902-915MHz passive backscatter transponder manufactured to the Title 21 California state standard - a late 1980s design done originally by Texas Instruments.

Onus on toller to find motorist

407ETR will use the Toronto/Texas camera toll model in which the onus is on the toller to find and bill the motorist without a transponder. No action by the motorist to register or initiate payment will be required.

Camera tolls will be more expensive than transponder account tolls, but the differential has not yet been established.

At present about 70% of tolls are paid by transponder on E470, 25% cash transactions with toll collectors, 5% coins into automatic coin machines. Nearly 530k transponders are on issue in the Denver area on 280k accounts.

Reasons advanced for the move to cashless are:

- improved safety, speed and convenience and reduced emissions

- electronic tolling costs 13c/transaction vs 30c for each cash transaction E470PHA says (though by our calculation their costs are 9c ET, 27c cash)

- cashless tolling has been accepted in the area already on Colorado Tolling Enterprise's I-25 toll lanes north of Denver

Ed DeLozier CEO has conceded there are negatives:

- higher losses of tolls to untraceable license plates (but not expected to be large)

- loss of the toll collector "ambassadors" who get to know customers, giving directions and are the 'human face' of the tollroad

Frontal cameras are being added at the high speed and high volume toll points as a measure to reduce toll losses through misreads.

Get a buck

E470 presently has cash toll collectors at mainline toll plazas and automatic coin machines at the ramps. With all-electronic tolling they'll overcome the three-coin maximum rule at coin machines that dictates no coin machine toll should be more than 25c. They can go to a dollar. (In coin machines more than three coins sees the incidence of problems soar. Motorists miss the basket, coins jam etc)

Dave Kristick E470PHA director of operations says that for them the changeover to Non Stop Tolling (NST) is mostly a change in business rules, in signage and striping, in civil works to block off the entries to the cash lanes, demolitions, and lots of communications, but he says the work involved in this "can't be minimized."

"Our video handling will need attention," he says because using cameras for regular tolling involves some differences from using it to collect tolls. The volume of images handled is much higher for a start.

Kristick says they benefitted from what he calls "Video Shoot Out" earlier this year organized by North Carolina Turnpike in picking up more subtle detail on camera capabilities.

E470 is evaluating two competing cameras presently with a view to installing front and back shot cameras at all heavy volume points. They are due to have all the mainline toll points plus some two lane ramps with front and rear cameras by Jan 1 2009.

"We redesigned our toll collection system (TCS) in 2003-2004, and have made continued improvements every year since then. It will require improvement to our storage area network. The toll collection system (TCS) application software is also undergoing GUI (graphical user interface) and backend changes to allow for License Plate Toll (LPT) billing and the necessary backend reconfiguration to allow the transactions to move from LPT billing to toll violation notices where the bills are not paid on time. We're also implementing several GUI 'wizards' which will allow our Customer Service Representatives to convert an LPT or violation customer to an EXpressToll customer with a literal mouse click."

The IT people at E470PHA do some of the work in-house. K2 Software did software development in 2003-2005, and Northern Lakes Data Corp now updates to the TCS.

Privacy an issue for 2.7%

A survey was carried out by the toll authority of the cash paying customers and their reason for not getting a transponder. Only 2.7% said it was for privacy. Most said they just didn't use the road often enough to justify it, or didn't want to go to the trouble of establishing an account and prepaying, or didn't know how to set up an account.

Camera tolling and a bill in the mail should work for those people.

see http://www.e-470.com

TOLLROADSnews 2008-08-21 ADDITIONS/REVISIONS 2008-08-22 15:00