North Carolina Turnpike gets 12 companies bidding for pieces of toll collection

ACS, IBM and TransCore bid for all three components of toll collection in North Carolina. Two companies Kapsch, and Telvent/Caseta bid on two components: front-end roadside toll collection system (RTCS) and back office systems (BOS) leaving operations to someone else. Seven companies bid for just one of the three components.

ETC and United Toll Systems separately bid for front end gear - readers, vehicle detection and classification, lights and cameras, signage, gantries, communications. The intiial front-end system will have to serve multiple segments of a basically 2x3 lane expressway for a total of 64 toll lanes.

Indra USA and  VESystems bid for back office systems - servers, desktop consoles, software, accounts, billing etc.

Alltech (PB subsidiary), Faneuil and Washington division of URS separately bid only for operations. (shown in the table nearby)

Operations includes not only toll operations but traffic management systems.

A few no-shows

Of those who do toll systems work several companies come to mind who were no-shows: TRMI, Raytheon, SICE, TransToll. One of these told us they didn't bid because they considered the chances of the whole project being called off was too high to warrant the bidding expense.

PBS&J and HNTB are working for NCTA, helping with the procurement.

Still undecided what transponder-reader will be used

It is not clear what front-end toll gear North Carolina Turnpike will use. They are located midway between active E-ZPass transponders to the north and southern systems in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia that use TransCore proprietary passive transponders and sticker tags.

TransCore is sure to be offering their lowcost eGo sticker tags and the eZGo Anywhere multimode transponders that could be read in both E-ZPass region and in the south if business arrangement scould be made for interoperability.

Kapsch is likely to offer a 5.9GHz VII/OmniAir transponder and probably multimode readers.

In the front-end requirement the bidders have to demonstrate an ability to cater to different options and combinations of gear with their gantry setup.

North Carolina is putting off as long as possible any decision on the basic transponder/reader models they will adopt in the hope that the E-ZPass Inter Agency Group will reach a decision on their next generation E-ZPass technology.

The first toll project the Triangle Expressway to the west of Raleigh is permitted, designed and has civil contractors ready to roll, but is delayed on financing by the crisis in the US capital markets. There are several other toll projects in the state coming right behind the Triangle Expressway and the RFP now bid provides for the option to extend toll collection contracts to these other toll facilities.

3 tons of paper

NCTA reports the bids came by a Monday (Feb 2) 4pm deadline in 136 boxes holding 780 binders, with 1,200,000 pages and weighing 6,000 pounds (2.7t). See picture nearby.

Short listed proposals will be announced Apr 17, followed by oral presentations through May 15. The Turnpike board is expected to rank the contractors May 20 for final negotiations.

The North Carolina systems will be cashless, or all-electronic tolling.

http://www.ncturnpike.org/operations/procurement.asp

TOLLROADSnews 2009-02-06