open road toll

The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC) Wednesday is celebrating two years of modernization of its busy I-80 toll bridge at the Delaware River Water Gap. The work completed includes an open road toll lane at the westbound-only toll plaza, removal of gates from cash lanes, and an extensive rehab of the steel i-beam girder bridges including new main bearings and deck joints - items that accommodate thermal expansion and contraction.

A single open road toll (ORT) lane on I-80 at the Delaware Water Gap bridge toll point is consistently carrying more traffic than five conventional toll lanes alongside, Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission  reports.  Traffic has been steaming through the leftside ORT lane at about 2,000 vehicles per hour (1.8 seconds per vehicle) during weekday peak periods, whereas the conventional toll lanes tend to back up when traffic goes above about 400

They call it the Express E-ZPass lane - what we call generically open road tolling (ORT). It's a single highway speed electronic toll lane on I-80 at the toll point for the Delaware Water Gap Bridge over the upper Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania near Stroudsburg PA. They opened it in a provisional configuration November 22 alongside five stop-to-pay cash lanes that also accept an E-ZPass transponder. (Tolling here is westbound only.)

Delaware DOT have advertised for bids to build two pairs of highway speed electronic toll lanes through the middle of their big toll plaza on I-95 near Newark, presently the bane of travelers in the Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia-New York corridor. The toll plaza not far from the Maryland line had been planned in the 1990s for complete rebuild and modernization as a conventional straight-across plaza at a cost of over $100m, but was stalled by funding.