ati

Three toll industry heavyweights the E-ZPass Interagency Group (IAG), the Alliance for Toll Interoperability and IBTTA have come together formally pledging to work together toward the goal of national toll interoperability. Senior officers of the three organizations are signing a two page Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation (MoUaC) in which they say each of the three want to:

- identify and establish processors, systems and standards to advance interoperability and all-electronic tolling

The OmniAir Consortium is announcing completion of development and testing of an Electronic Payment Services National Interoperability Specification (EPSNIS) which pronounces easily as 'Epsniss'.

The board of the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) this week unanimously agreed to their selection committee's recommendation that the three month pilot program go ahead with all four companies that qualified earlier. The four to operate the pilot hubs are ACS, Cofiroute, FSTech and Secure Interagency Flow (Egis and CS, CS America previously InTrans).

Four companies have been shortlisted in the procurement of toll interoperability hubs by the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI): ACS, Cofiroute, Federal Signal and an Egis/CS-Intrans joint venture named Secure Interagency Flow. Eleven groups had proposed so this means seven were dropped.

Eleven companies or groups have bid to set up and operate a national hub for billing the tolls of out-of-area motorists based initially on license plate camera reads. In Phase One of the procurement by the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) three of the eleven will be selected to set up a hub each and demonstrate their billing of nightly batches of data for a three month period late September to late-December.

Proposals were received from:

The Alliance for Toll Interoperability have formally filed their important Hub Request for Proposals. It has a May 2 deadline and the schedule provides for final selection by June 20, and Notice to Proceed by July 8, of an operator (or up to three operators) for three to six months of pilot operations.

By summer as many as 40 toll agencies across the US could be having out of state tolls run through hubs in a six month pilot program for a permanent clearinghouse. Over 80 companies are vying for the hub contracts in a program  that should lead to seamless automatic toll collection at highway speeds across the country - potentially the biggest advance in toll collection since the first electronic toll transponders were introduced in the late 1980s.

Most of north America's tollers have agreed to participate in developing a hub to clear license plate tolls - a key step to improving the reach of all-electronic tolling (AET).

The board of the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) in a teleconference Monday accepted the resignation of J J Eden as chairman to date with his departure from North Carolina DOT. It voted to appoint the present vice-chair David Machamer of Oklahoma Turnpike Authority to replace Eden when he joins the private sector.

ATI has issued a formal Request for Information (RFI) seeking a comprehensive solution for using license plate images (video) as the basis for inter-authority toll charges across North America.