North Texas Tollways aim to end cash toll collection evening Dec 10

North Texas Tollway Authority say they are doing the final conversion of their network to all-electronic tolling (AET) with a schedule that will have the last cash tolls collected on the evening of December 10 2010. The work is on the Tollway Authority's oldest (1968), tightest and busiest facility, the Dallas North Tollway, and starts June 21.

President George Bush Turnpike was fully converted to cashless or AET July 1 2009. Sam Rayburn Tollway (TX121) was built AET.

Cash collection is being ended too at NTTA's three smaller toll facilities: Addison Airport Tunnel and Lewisville Lake Toll Bridge and Mountain Creek Lake Toll Bridge.

Wycliff Avenue mainline toll plaza at the southern end has had open road toll lanes since April 2001. In January 2007 the cash lanes at Wycliff Av were closed after some weeks of worsening congestion from the merge of cash and ORT traffic. Cash lanes were simply barriered off and all the traffic sent through the ORTR lanes which with license plate tolling (brandnamed ZipCash) became all-electronic tolling (AET) early by improvisation.

That leaves three other mainline toll plazas and 14 ramp toll pairs to be converted in the next six months.

Order inverted

NTTA completely inverted an AET conversion plan announced in August 2007 which would have converted Dallas North Tollway (DNT) to AET in 2008 and 2009, and others later.  (see http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3081)

But the overall conversion is about on schedule.

New construction heavy in I-635/TX121 segment

First major signs of the new DNT work will be north of the I-635 LBJ Fwy with concrete barriers and temporary striping providing workspace for new sign and toll gantries. This is the beginning of the sections with continuous frontage roads.

Large concrete columns will be formed for the gantries, the spans being steel trusses constructed off-site, then lifted in to place by crane. Work will be concentrated in off-peak times.

Cost of the full three year conversion of all four facilities and 65 miles (105km) of tollroad has been budgeted at $93m.

189 toll collectors and cash handler positions are ending.

For six or seven months after the end of cash collection there will be demolition and tidy-up work to remove the remains of cash booths and lanes. The whole job is due to be finished July 2011.

NTTA says in their statement: "All-electronic toll collection provides enhanced mobility, safety and air quality."

It also provides significant operational savings.

License plate tolling brand-named ZipCash carries a 50% premium over transponder tolls, more or less covering the extra collection costs.

ETC Corp are doing systems integration work for the NTTA conversion.

Improvisation or seizing the moment

Most fun in the NTTA conversion story is how unexpected events intervened and how NTTA officials seized the moment. The crash of a truck with a full dumpster at the Wycliff Avenue mainline toll plaza Jan 30 2001 seriously damaged the central toll lanes.

NTTA officials saw a choice - do the safe thing and repair and restore those toll lanes, or make a leap to open road tolling (ORT) well ahead of their careful plans.

They decided on the second course and completed the demolition of the old stop-to-pay/roll-through lanes that the errant dumpster truck had started.

On April 21 2001 two highway speed or open road toll lanes opened each direct.

Early 2007 a second unplanned event intervened - growing traffic volumes led to seriously worsening backups at the same toll plaza where the cash and open road streams of traffic had to merge.

Again the safe decision would have been to wait to go AET at Wycliff Av along with all the rest of the road. But again officials successfully seized the moment by barriering off the cash lanes and ending cash collection. Without the traffic merge there was no congestion. And although it broke a planners rule of a need for consistency, motorists lived with three years of no-cash collection at one toll point, and cash at all the rest.

On the truck crash that led to early AET decision:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/2839

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/2906

On new off-road payment options being instituted

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/4639

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/4583

NTTA on AET

http://www.ntta.org/AboutUs/Projects/AllETC/

map of current state of AET conversion:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/sites/default/files/AET201005.pdf

On savings from AET:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3081

TOLLROADSnews 2010-06-13