ACS wins roadside toll collection, back office for TriX NC, URS Wash do ops services

ACS State & Local have won two of the three major toll systems contracts just announced for the Triangle Expressway in North Carolina - Roadside Toll Collection and Back Office Systems. Washington Division of URS won Operations Services. Transponders & readers will be a separate fourth contract with eihter Transcore or a Mark IV/Kapsch joint venture - a contract due for decision in Nov/Dec.

This is a cashless system - to use transponders and camera tolling. Also it lies geographically between the IAG area top the north and the sticker tag/passive toll systems Florida, Texas and Oklahoma.

Details of the ACS and URS selections are not yet available since Turnpike officials are engaged in final negotiations with the selected companies.

12 companies bid for one, two, or all three of the contracts, only ACS and TransCore proposing for all three.

see table nearby

The procurement was based on a "best value" assessment, not price alone. A presentation to the NCTA board says the selection committee was excited about the number and quality of submissions, saying they were "outstanding and representative of a high level of expertise."

The final rankings were unanimous.

The roadside system contract includes video classification and detection, video tolling (cameras) and an open road toll facilities building with monitoring and surveillance of the road. Also front end system integration.

The back office system is to provide transaction processing, video/optical character recognition (OCR) processing, and transaction data management and tracking.

Operations covers traffic management and ITS staffing, and customer service center staffing in what was described as "active partnership" with NCTA.

Triangle Expressway is a 30km, 18.8 mile, billion dollar, 6-lane tollroad being built on the western fringe of the Raleigh metro area. Construction recently got under way.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-09-21