Tampa Expressway sets July 2010 to go all-electronic

Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority (THEA) have set July 2010 for the end of cash collection on their Selmon Expressway also known as the Crosstown. They are featuring the decision - made in principle more than a year back - and the date on their website at http://www.tampa-xway.com/ORTComingSoon.html

They are calling it open road tolling or ORT. The terminology being used around the US is chaotic and inconsistent. In Illinois and other places open road tolling (ORT) is used to describe highway speed multilane tolling down the middle with cash collection continuing to the sides, while others like THEA use it to characterize cashless tolling in which all tolls are collected by transponder or video. We prefer to use the term all-electronic tolling (AET) to describe completely cashless tolling.

The case for cashless is described this way by THEA in four bullet points:

•    SAFE – Eliminates toll plaza safety issues
•    FAST– No more stop & go - saves money, gas & time
•    CLEAN– reduces emissions
•    CONVENIENT - online, phone or in person account management (Ends THEA bullet points)

Florida Turnpike Enterprise is THEA's contract toll collector. Under an FTE contract TransCore has installed Encompass E-6 dual mode readers on the Tampa system and will provide the slimmed down dual gantry system for open road tolling. To be converted are two mainline plazas and five pairs of ramps.

The system is already doing 70% electronic and since July 2006 has operated an all-electronic toll point on the elevated reversible lanes that go between downtown Tamps and the eastern end of the Selmon as a separate roadway.
Toll collectors are being reduced by attrition and retraining.

BACKGROUND: THEA is a state of Florida toll authority created to finance the Crosstown Expressway now known as the Selmon Expressway which is the major east-west highway through downtown Tampa. It has increasingly taken on management and operations. 24km (15 miles) long 2x2 lanes, the Selmon opened in stages in 1976, 1981 and 1986 for a total of 96 lane-km (60 lane-miles).

The 3-lane elevated reversible known as Reversible Express Lanes (RELs) which opened in July 2006 is 16km long (10 miles) and adds 45 lane-km (28 lane-miles) in each peak direction, so it nearly doubles THEA system peakhour capacity. Over the 16km (10 miles from downtown to the east it provides 2.5 times the prior capacity - 5 lanes in the peak direction compared to 2 before over 14km (9 miles).

The RELs now account for a quarter of overall THEA trips. Its AET gantry pair is among the most complex electronic tolling installation yet implemented with 18 readers and 24 cameras networked to a  single controller. They report 99% accuracy.

Toll revenue in 2007 was $37m on 33.7m transactions (92k/day).

The Selmon Expressway competes for traffic with the I-4/I-275 running parallel from the east in to just west of the Tampa CBD. Hillsborough County which comprises the basic service area for the Selmon has 1.13m pop qnd has been growing at around 2.1%/yr.  Population growth is expected to decline to about 1.3%/yr by 2020 according to a WSA traffic and revenue study.

WSA project traffic growth at 2.2% 2010 to 2020.  Transactions are expected to grow from 33.7m/yr to 42m/yr by 2017 and revenues to about $70m in 2017 from $37m in 2007 based on average tolls going from $1.11 to $1.66.
THEA and FDOT are working on a major connector road between I-4 and the Selmon Expressway that will have separate truck roadways to improve connections to the downtown and the port area.

THEA is also studying a Gandy Connector at the western end of the existing expressway to provide  higher quality connection to the Gandy bridge over Tampa Bay. At present a ten block 2.5km (1.5 mile) stretch of W Gandy Boulevard (US92) is surface signalized arterial and a major bottleneck.

While the I-4 Connector is designed and approved as a largely elevated project, there is no agreed form yet for a Gandy Blvd upgrade.

see previous report on cashless

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3490

TOLLROADSnews 2009-01-04