ETC wins CSC/VP contract at DRJTBC beating ACS, TransCore, Faneuil

Electronic Transaction Consultants (ETC) has been selected by Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission to design and operate a new electronic toll customer service and violations processing center (CS/VPC). Violations processing is new to DRJTBC because so far they have gates in all their toll lanes. That however is changing with a move to open road tolling at the I-78 and I-80 toll bridges NJ-PA and the removal of gates at many single toll lanes.

With vehicles able to travel at highway speed in transponder-only lanes the bridge commission is forced to develop video enforcement or use of cameras to record passage of vehicles without a working valid E-ZPass transponder account.

The Commission in a statement today says: "The implementation of the new combined customer service and violation processing center will ultimately allow the Commission to remove gates at its toll booths. Those gates currently serve as the primary enforcement mechanism for toll violators. This contract will replace the Commission's existing Customer Service Center contract and includes the added Violation Processing Center to coincide with the removal of the gates within the conventional toll lanes and the implementation of Open Road Tolling (ORT) lanes at the I-78 and Delaware Water Gap (I-80) Toll Bridges."

The contract being awarded to ETC is for design and construction of the system and five years operations and is priced at $10.6m. The RFP in June attracted four proposals:

-ETC

-ACS

- Faneuil

- TransCore

TransCore is already doing the front-end or in-lane toll systems work for DRJTBC including the open road readers, lane controllers, vehicle detection, classification and tracking as well as manual toll booth upgrades. TransCore does customer service/violations at the Pennsylvania Turnpike though that contract is up for redbid, and in Massachusetts.

Faneuil which has large operations contracts in Florida and TransCore were eliminated in the first round at the Delaware River, leaving ACS and ETC.

ACS, Affiliated Computer Systems, another Dallas headquartered company is the largest customer service operator for electronic tolling in the US with huge operations in New York (Thruway, Triborough Authority, PANYNJ), New Jersey and northern California. Its major business is back office outsourcing for government agencies. (It is unrelated to the toll operator ACS of Spain.)

The first review of the proposals at DRJTBC eliminated TransCore and Faneuil, leaving ACS the incumbent customer service operator, and ETC.

A DRJTBC official said he didn't have the prices submitted by the other three contenders, but the choice of ETC was "best value" in which price was part of the winning offer, the other parts being the specifics of the proposal, expertise, and experience.

ETC has major customer service/violations operations contracts with the Texas Turnpike Division of Texas DOT for several tollroads in the Austin area, plus the Crescent City Connection Bridge in New Orleans. They operate out of a center in Richardson in the Dallas metro area. The company originates in a bunch of consultants who developed systems for Harris County (Houston) and what is now North Texas Tollway Authority in Dallas. Their largest job was for Illinois Tollway where they did front and back end work involving a conversion to open road tolling of all 20 mainline toll plazas 2003-2006.

Atlanta, formerly Autostrade SpA the large Italian toll operator bought a 45% share in ETC last December, while 55% is held by the founders and senior officers.  Autostrade does toll operations at the Dulles Greenway in northern Virginia, a job it has had since 1995 when the private pike opened.

I-78, I-80 Open Road Tolling

The Delaware River Commission announced a decision in December 2005 to move to open road tolling (ORT) at its I-78 crossing. HNTB were appointed in April 2006 to develop plans. Design work is done and construction is under way. Open road tolling will follow on the Delaware River Water Gap bridge of I-80.

ORT will involve video enforcement system (VES) coverage of three travel lanes plus shoulder lanes each side for 5 lanes per toll point given one-way tolling. (TERMINOLOGY: some call VES violation enforcement system, but video is the technology used for enforcing payment of tolls. You don't want to enforce a violation unless you are a cop with a quota. Editor)

VES in conventional lanes

Along with open road tolling at the Delaware River gates will be removed and VES installed in some 25 single lanes at four bridges with an option to do 12 more lanes at another three bridges.

That makes 35 VES lanes and a possible 47 with options exercised.

ETC will also have to develop interfaces with TransCore's front end and transition from ACS's customer service. This will involve software and computing power to handle accounts and images, an 800 number telephone service, a DRJTBC E-ZPass website, violation notices, plus coding and dispatch of transponders.

BACKGROUND: The DRJTBC was formed by the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey in 1934 largely to take over and de-toll a collection of private toll bridges operated under charters, many going back a century. But toll financing was used by DRJTBC to build new seven toll bridges and these generate the revenues to support some 13 untolled bridges, many of them the formerly private toll bridges.

The Commission calls these 13 "toll-supported bridges" since they are supported by the profits of the seven toll bridges.

The Commission's jurisdiction extends along the Delaware River from the Philadelphia-Bucks County line near Trenton north to the New Jersey/New York border. Their bridges carried 141 million vehicles in 2007 or an average 386k vehicles/day. Tolling is westbound only and generated $85.5m last financial year.

see: http://www.drjtbc.org

TOLLROADSnews 2008-10-27