Feds propose mandating "interoperability of electronic toll collection devices for all toll facilities..."

The Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 (STAA or hb44) filed today by US house transport committee chair James Oberstar requires the US Secretary of Transportation to establish a "national standard for the interoperability of electronic toll collection devices for all  toll facilities on the National Highway System" within 18 months of the law's enactment. Not later than two years after the national standard is established "all toll facilities on the National Highway System shall adopt such standard," the legislation declares.

All major toll facilities in the country are classified as components of the National Highway System so this provision in the bill would apparently affect most US tollers.

This national interoperability for electronic tolling was not mentioned in materials released last week and it takes about half of one page of 775 pages of the pdf of the bill released today (page 300 of Sec 1301):

http://transportation.house.gov/Media/file/Highways/HPP/OBERST_044_xml.pdf

The bill has no definition of what it means by interoperability although the term is generally understood to mean that various toll systems must be able to work with one another's equipment. The IEEE defines interoperability as "the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged."

Wikipedia says interoperability is "the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together - to inter-operate."

Interoperability is something of a retreat from previous federal efforts which aimed  at a single standard electronic toll system.

Earlier US mandates flopped

The first US Government mandates in the 1990s produced ASTMv6 as a supposed national electronic toll standard. But the only toll authority which adopted it was 407ETR - in Canada! It was also adopted in Israel where all US standard ASTMv6 transponders are manufactured.

ASTMv6 is used by truckers for weigh station bypass in the US, but hardly at all for tolling.

New York State Thruway has dual mode readers that read the truckers ASTMv6 transponders as well as the IAG Mark IV E-ZPass tags.

But as a national standard ASTMv6 was about a 99.9% failure.

The US Government's second effort to develop a standard produced the 5.9GHz OmniAir/IntelliDrive standard, and at least two vendors (Mark IV and Kapsch) are proposing this as the next generation E-ZPass in the IAG's current electronic toll system recompete.

But it is far from clear that the IAG is going to adopt US Government sponsored 5.9GHz. 

Already have interoperability in IAG, within major states

The IAG covers about 60% of US tolling, and it is internally "interoperable" now - motorists from Maine to West Virginia or from Rhode Island to Illinois can already use one another's toll facilities with their single 915MHz transponder.

California, Colorado, Texas and Florida all have  interoperability between different tollers within their respective states (an Orlando transponder will be recognized on Tampa or Miami, and a Dallas TX one will work in Houston or Austin), but in these states there is no interoperability with out-of state toll authorities.

ATI

North Carolina Turnpike's Jim Eden formed an Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) early last year, in part because his state is stuck right on the border between the active IAG systems of the mid-Atlantic and northeast and the passive ATA/eGo systems of the south.

https://www.tollinterop.org/Common/Home.aspx

ATI has been quite successful in assembling a bunch of toll authorities to discuss interoperability.

Their priorities are agreed to be:

1. establish interstate customer video tolling interoperability

2. pursue DMV plate exchange

3. determine state legislation of ETC / DMV sharing info

4. investigate RFID toll interoperability

5. consider future technology in the context of tolling interoperability – application of which would be within each agency’s operating rules

6. cost effectiveness & efficiencies/controls

Video tolling or the use of camera systems to identify vehicles has been logically set as the first priority of ATI, since video is the fallback whenever a transponder cannot be read - whether it's malfunctioning, or a foreign tag, or entirely missing from the vehicle.

Cooperation across state lines to exchange video data and provide access to motor registry records is needed so motorists without a functioning locally readable transponder can be billed.  National interoperability would have to focus on video toll exchange arrangements.

Multimode readers

The other approach to interoperability involves multi mode readers - readers which can read two or more different transponders in the one stream of traffic. All the major manufacturers now offer such readers. TransCore's Encompass 6 is being used in Texas and Florida to read eGo sticker tags and the hardbody ATA transponders. Sirit (ID5100), Mark IV and Kapsch also offer multimode readers to allow some interoperability.

There are problems however:

1. Patent claims with Mark IV alleging breach of its patents with TransCore reading IAG technology tags, and TransCore suing over competitors reading their sticker tags

2. Most multimode readers can be set to read only two transponder types at one time - while we have across the US:

- E-ZPass IAG,

- California Title 21,

- ATA,

- eGo,

- ISO 18000-6C,

- 5.9GHz.

That's six standards to which could be added the great unused ASTMv6 for seven standards.

In the case of transponder-reader systems the big question is - who pays to scrap perfectly serviceable networks of readers and transponders in the great national cause of interoperability.

Full interoperability of transponder-reader systems is not going to happen within the 3.5 years mentioned in hb44. It is one thing to adopt a new standard and another to implement it.

This is a bit like weight loss. It's relatively easy to adopt a standard regimen of reduced eating and more exercise for a healthier weight, but another thing entirely to impose it, even on oneself.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-06-22