Atlantic City Expressway to look at all-electronic toll decision in the fall, new study ordered

South Jersey Transportation Authority's board has endorsed a $56k report by Wilbur Smith Associates to lay out the implications of moving to all-electronic tolling (AET) as compared to upgrading obsolete electronic and cash collection and providing open road lanes on the Atlantic City Expressway (ACE). Sharon Gordon spokesman for the south Jersey toller says the board now expect to make a decision this fall after the WSA report is received. Michael Kolb of TTI is  consulting engineer on the project.

Kathleen Sharman, SJTA finance director laid out some of the issues confronting the authority in a presentation at the IBTTA's "Future of Tolling" conference in Tampa last month.

Atlantic City Expressway's (ACE) toll systems go back to 1963/4. E-ZPass transponder tolling was retrofitted over those legacy systems in 1998 for roll-through electronic tolling.

In 2004 one of the two mainline toll plazas, Pleasantville on the approach to Atlantic City got four open road toll (ORT) lanes through the middle called Express E-ZPass. Those ORT lanes plus all the remaining nine old cash lanes were bridged by an enormous arched 'bowstring truss' structure carrying a staff walkway over the lot.

With a  clear span of 72.5m (238ft) and costing $12m the Pleasantville signature plaza bridge, or as some deride it "the Pleasantville Folly" must be one of the longest staff bridges built for open road tolling.

The basic toll collection infrastructure of toll plazas on the Expressway is 45 years old, and the plaza hosts and other computers are now 11 years old.

Big question is whether to go ORT+cash at the Egg Harbor toll plaza replicating the 2002-2004 work at Pleasantville, and what to do about the cash systems.

Egg Harbor modernized for ORT plus new cash on the sides is estimated to cost $34m.

Rehab of the cash lanes at Pleasantville on which $18m has already been spent to provide ORT is another $10m.

Ramp toll lanes modernized for cash plus transponder toll collection is put at $18m, and violation equipment (VES) at $3m.

Summing those: modernization for cash plus open road electronic tolling requires capital expenditure of $65m+.

All-electronic tolling by contrast is estimated to require only $34m in capital spending -  saving $31m.

Both the ORT/cash and AET alternatives improve safety and reduce queueing congestion, but AET is attractive , Sharman says, becuase it will allow:

- variable pricing

- smaller, more frequent toll adjustments with abandonment of coin denominations

- distance based tolling

- reduced emissions because no vehicles stop to pay

Issues still to be resolved before SJTA takes the AET plunge, Sharman says, include technical matters of license plate recognition and the proportion of good reads that can be obtained, the collection process for video tolling and the effect on cash flow.

Board members have raised questions about whether the absence of cash collection will draw significant customer convenience and privacy complains, and how the transition of staff from manual collection to customer service will be managed.

ACE carries a heavy load of out-of-state traffic, especially from Pennsylvania but also other northeastern and mid-Atlantic states so cooperation in video tolling across state borders is important for the success of AET.

Transponder usage on ACE Expressway is only 56% at present and the goal is to get it to 75% by 2010. SJTA is planning to promote transponders through retail stores, casinos, convention centers, hotels and car rental companies - all to boost transponder usage and reduce the cash or video toll load, whichever is the chosen alternative.

The capital cost savings are obviously large and attractive.

Sharman thinks there are longterm annual operating cost savings too.

There is still some worry about the loss from uncollectible video tolls, and a cash flow model is being developed to try forecast the possible range of losses.

Video tolls would be set at a premium over transponder tolls to attempt to cover the higher costs of collecting video toll revenue.

There is no decision yet, but AET is obviously a strong contender with ORT+cash.

Local headlines in the New Jersey press have been: "Atlantic City Expressway may go cashless".

That's about as helpful as a weather report headline: "Florida may get hurricane this summer."

It may, it may not.

BACKGROUND: Atlantic City Expressway is the most direct and fastest road between the Philadelphia metro area and Atlantic City on the Jersey Shore. Although it has no direct connection to the New Jersey Turnpike it also functions as the major route between points south like Maryland and Delaware and the south Jersey shore. Some northern New Jersey traffic to the South Jersey shore prefers the Turnpike plus the Expressway to the Garden State Parkway.

76km (47 miles) long and with widening to 2x3 lanes nearly complete ACE does an average 185k toll transactions per day with two mainline toll plazas and four pairs of ramp plazas. Built in grassland and swamp it is almost completely flat and straight.

Toll revenue last year was $63m.

SJTA's disconcerting logo with an expressway morphing into an airplane is meant to signify that as well as the toll expressway, SJTA also operates an airport - Atlantic City Airport.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-07-06