Ohio Turnpike reconsiders vehicle classification - bikers, rooftop loaders complain

Ohio Turnpike Commission officials are reconsidering aspects of their new vehicle classification following complaints of unfairness by bicycle enthusiasts and others with roof loads. October 1 last year when E-ZPass came into operation on the Turnpike they also introduced a complete new vehicle classification schedule, and a new toll system. The Turnpike was advised by general engineering consultant Jacobs and the contractor was TransCore.

Dumped was a 40 year old weight based classification system from IBM, that Ohio and Pennsylvania had alone.

Main customer gripe about the new classification system comes from bicycle enthusiasts. Addition of a bicycle to the roof of a car moves it from a Class 1 vehicle to Class 2. That's because anything measured higher than 7.5ft, 90 inches, or 2.29m hoists the vehicle up a class.

The elevation in vehicle class raises the toll to travel the width of the state from the Class 1 toll of$10.25 to a Class 2's $18.00 with E-ZPass and from $15 to $25 for cash.

A correspondent in a Cleveland newspaper wrote: "So I can put 1,000 pounds of sandbags in my trunk for free, but if I put 200 pounds of stuff on my roof to make more room on the seats for my kids, it costs almost twice as much? Also, people with top carriers or bikes tend to be on vacation or enjoying weekend recreation. What a slap in the face to tourists."

The Turnpike Commission deliberately placed a bicycle-atop-a-car in the higher vehicle class.

Early vehicle classification charts left it ambiguous showing Class 2 as simply a car with a trailer and a small U-Haul style box van (left above).

Then the Turnpike Commission posted a chart adding in the bicycle-atop-a-car and a minivan carrying a roof cargo trunk showing four Class 2 types in place of the initial two (right below).

But in an interview today CEO Turnpike executive-director George Distel told us they have reconsidered the rooftop load, and that they will officially be downclassifying the roof-load vehicles to the Class 1 in a third vehicle class chart yet to be posted.

They are trying to find a way of getting the automatic vehicle classification equipment to overlook the roof loads.

Simple height measuring laser beam scanners do the job at present.

But the faster that vehicles move through the toll point the more difficult is it to distinguish small roof loads from a fixed higher roof with simple scanning gear.

Many classification regimes

Vehicle classifications vary from one toller to another. There's no standardization among toll authorities,  not within the E-Zpass Inter Agency Group.

One of the few other tollers to use the Ohio Turnpike's 90 inch (7.5ft) height threshold in vehicle classification is New York State Thruway.

New York say that temporary or 'non-permanent' items atop the vehicle are not considered when determining a vehicle's class. They give examples: kayaks, bicycles, ladders, snow board, luggage carriers. Forget 'em, is the Thruway's rule.

But at the NY Thruway they have no height measuring equipment, or for that matter any automatic vehicle classification equipment.

Toll collectors in New York just eyeball vehicles and assign them a class at the toll terminal the old-fashioned way. They look at each vehicle and hit the appropriate class key on the toll terminal.

In the case of electronic tolling (E-ZPass) motorists' accounts on the Thruway are assigned a vehicle classification when the account is established.

No vehicle classification done in the lanes.

Open road tolling

With a move to open road tolling and its multiple traffic lanes equipment that can be used in a single lane becomes unusable. A sidefire laser or light beam becomes hit and miss when vehicles can drive side by side.

Open road or all-electronic tolling usually makes use of overhead-mounted volumetric or 3-dimensional scanners for vehicle classification. But on a lane-based toll system as large as the Ohio Turnpike such volumetric scammers would be an expensive solution.

Ohio is a trip based toll road. So on the new Ohio Turnpike system vehicles are scanned on entry and a vehicle class is written to the ticket issued to the motorist from a ticket machine. Or, in the case of trnasponder tolling the vehicle class is measured by the automatic classification system and written to the transponder memory on entry, along with the time and place of entry.

Distel told us today that toll collectors on the Ohio Turnpike are now under instructions to disregard roof loads which means they are expected to down rate the vehicle class if the automatic equipment has read the roof load as a high vehicle and issued a ticket as Class 2 vehicle.

There remains the problem of electronic transponder transactions. They will often still have roof loads that elevate the vehicle class as the lane equipment is presently working.

Distel says for now customers need to check their E-ZPass account and if they have a problem and been over-classified, they should call their E-ZPass customer service center to get their class corrected.

Ohio Turnpike could, like the NY Thruway assign the vehicle account a class, and then work to police its misuse with higher class vehicles. But no decision on that has yet been made, Distel says.

In Houston Texas in the late 1990s it became commonplace for owners of big rigs to sign up for a transponder with the details of their private car, and then stick the car-encoded transponder on the windshield of their 18-wheeler.

For some years, until automatic vehicle classification was installed these, many truckers thereby enjoyed low car toll rates!

Ohio Turnpike only 22% or so transponder transactions

With electronic tolling barely four months old on the Ohio Turnpike only about 22% of toll transactions are via transponder, 78% go with a collector.

"Growing pains"

Distel says "we've had our share of growing pains" but he says that they are working through them, and getting better. He doesn't know the incidence of the roof load issues.

They have been a major focus of local media coverage - newspapers and TV.

The CEO says the Turnpike is committed to working out the problems cooperatively with their customers.

TOLLROADSnews 2010-01-20