Massachusetts Governor Patrick asked for briefing on all-electronic tolling from Raytheon

The Boston Herald reports that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and his transportation  secretary Jeffrey Mullan met Jan 28 with Raytheon officials to hear their pitch on the potential for all-electronic tolling (AET).

The Herald's Hillary Chabot wrote: "Gov Deval Patrick is quietly moving forward with a plan to install electronic tolling on the Massachusetts Turnpike that would target costly, patronage-laden toll takers as he pushes for reelection, the Herald has learned. The high-speed drive-through system - which is still in the discussion phase - could end nightmarish backups and save millions per year in toll taker salaries."

A governor's aide called it a "listening session" and said: "We’re learning more about their approach on open-road tolling and what they do in other states."

A transportation department spokesman confirmed the discussions also saying they are preliminary and  “No decision’s been made, nothing beyond hearing about their technology and learning about it."

Raytheon officials declined to comment on the talks, but they and other companies frequently have informational discussions like those described - although not often with a state governor. Gov Patrick has a special interest in technology however. He last year talked about the potential for electronic vehicle registration sticker tags as offered by 3M, Sirit and TransCore and its potential for supporting a vehicle-miles charge. But he has not gone beyond proposing research.

Raytheon specialize in cashless all-electronic tolling (AET) which they first implemented on 407-ETR in Toronto in 1997, a system that now collects about twice the toll revenues of the Massachusetts Turnpike without ever having had a single toll collector, and has a healthy cash flow.  

With many vendors now, AET is in use on toll facilities in Texas, Colorado, Florida, California, Minnesota, Washington, and Illinois. It will begin this year in Maryland (Inter County Connector) and next year in North Carolina. It is in use in Britain, Chile, Israel, France, Germany, Australia and other countries.

High cost toll collection

The Massachusetts Turnpike is now operated by massDOT Highways Division which hasn't yet published any financial report on the Turnpike. In its last year as an independent authority the Turnpike reported accounts for 18 months to mid-2008 so numbers we cite below are 12/18 (x0.67) to reduce the odd year and a half numbers to an annual rate.

Toll revenues were $275m and concessions fines and other items brought total revenues to $327m/yr. Operating expenses were $352m so there was an annual rate of operating loss of $25m. Interest expense was $128m  and investment income, insurance settlements and assistance from the state reduced non-operating expenses to $74m.

The Turnpike therefore made losses of $25m+$74m=$99m on an annual basis. The Turnpike had bond debt of $2,322m, now assumed by the state, plus huge unaccounted pension obligations to employees.

A task force report commissioned by the state on the Turnpike in October 2006 headed by Eric Kris said that the cost of manual toll collection had grown "unacceptably high" and cost 29c in the $ collected versus 9.6c for the electronic toll system with the brandname FAST LANE.

Toll collectors cost $66,180 average/year

Three quarters of the cost was toll collector wages which averaged about $56,300 year in base wages plus benefits of $9,880 for total average compensation of $66,180. On top of this they got 6 weeks vacation, generous holidays and 15 sick days each year.

Workers compensation claims of $3,280/yr average made toll collection "seemingly one of the most hazardous jobs" in the state.  

Restrictive work rules in the Turnpike's labor contracts made the deployment of this expensive labor highly inefficient, the Kris report said. Manual toll collection was "a fixed cost" because management at the Mass Pike was unable to vary staffing according to the traffic.  (see table from Kris report nearby)

"For many locations and during low traffic... MTA actually loses money just on the collection (cost) itself," the report found, adding "This means in effect that it would be less expensive to simply not collect any tolls at all in these situations." (p3)

Delays to motorists from manual toll collection were estimated by the Kris report to cost $22m/year, what they called a waiting tax of 18% on top of $120m in cash tolls themselves. Extra fuel consumption caused by stop-to-pay was put at $2m.

The report said the Turnpike was running "an unsustainable longterm structural deficit of 10% to 20%" and listed among the causes:

- "high cost union contracts burdened by unreasonable work rules... locked in by an unprecedented ceding of executive authority"

- "under-investment in systems, internal controls and repairs..."

Nothing significant has been reported changed at the Turnpike under massDOT control.

TOLLROADSnews 2010-02-09