Florida Turnpike

Crashes are down drastically at the Miami toll points of Florida's Turnpike since their conversion to all-electronic tolling (AET) February 19 this year. Five former mainline toll plazas (one a split plaza) went completely freeflow and cashless in the conversion. Previously they'd had open road tolling (ORT) through the middle but cash toll booths to the sides of the mainline plazas.

Feel sorry for reporters in Miami. The nonsense of local reporting compels a Followup-Today of yesterday's Big Story - the corporate jet that landed on the Turnpike near Hollywood FL, north of Miami. In dailies the News Editor demands that Follow-Up. So whether or not they get anything today they have to file something today as the followup, even if it's nonsense.

But the Miami Herald outdid themselves in nonsense today with this lede:

There have to be  jokes this week about airplane landing tolls on Florida's Turnpike. About 1pm Wednesday a small aircraft landed in the northbound lanes of Florida's Turnpike less than a mile south of the Hollywood FL exit. It landed traveling south against the flow of traffic.

Just weeks after OOCEA, the Orlando toller, defeated a move at the state legislature by Florida Turnpike to dismantle it and take over its network of tollroads in central Florida, all is apparently forgiven. The chair of the OOCEA Walter Ketcham announced before the holiday break that the state Turnpike had offered what he called a "meaningful partnership toward making the Wekiva Parkway a reality."

Florida DOT, Faneuil and eight officials involved in toll collection on Florida's Turnpike are defendants in a class action suit that claims motorists paying with $20 bills and above were unlawfully detained on a systematic basis by toll collectors demanding identification and other "personal information" before the toll gate was raised.

With less than a month until the busy Miami area HEFT segment of Florida's Turnpike goes all-electronic there's a push to publicize a growing network of off-road locations where motorists can use cash to top up their SunPass transponder accounts. Most of the publicity has previously gone to the new Toll-by-Plate or license plate based collection method that will substitute for cash payment when toll booths and coin machines cease operations February 19.

Florida's Turnpike made the first step toward implementation of all-electronic toll (AET) operations with the beginning of toll-by-plate midnight Monday night (2010-10-11) on the southern 47 mile (76km) stretch of the Turnpike in the Miami-Dade area. Known as the Turnpike Extension (previously HEFT) from Mirimar looping a bit west and south to its end around the edge of the Miami Dade metro area it ends in the Florida City/Homestead area.

With cash payment disappearing on the tollroads of Florida as they go all-electronic, the state Turnpike is publicizing a major initiative to allow motorists to pay their tolls offroad with cash or a bank card.  The program uses the BlackStone “Touch-n-Buy” touch-screen terminals - bright red machines in use for multiple purposes at nearly 600 locations around Florida - in pharmacies, convenience stores, gas stations, ethnic markets, check cashing stores,

Toll collectors at some plazas of Florida's Turnpike Enterprise are recording the license plates of all drivers who tender $20 and larger denomination bills. The Turnpike has been collecting a number of high quality counterfeits that aren't immediately caught as bogus.

Toll collectors are under instructions to record license plates of all vehicles of motorists tendering high denomination notes - either to catch offenders or deter them.

The procedure has been reducing plaza throughput somewhat.

HEFT, the busiest tollroad in Florida with an average 460k transactions/day and point flows of up to 175k AADT is going cashless in the spring of 2011. The first construction contracts for toll equipment gantries and other civil works have just been let - $33m worth.