transcore

2013-04-18: TransCore has quietly told major customers that it is prepared to license the use of toll tag protocols eGo and SeGo in the readers manufactured by Kapsch and 3M/Sirit. There has been no discussion of the license fee $-amounts or terms, our sources say. TransCore made the offer in order to keep the protocols in play for adoption for national interoperability (IOP).

2013-04-15: The Toll Roads as they are branded in Orange County California are due to go cashless and all-electronic (AET) in the spring of 2014 according to announcement of contracts the boards of the Transportation Corridors Agencies have just approved with TransCore.

2012-11-18: Patents on electronic toll systems in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and other states using 6B+ sticker tags are seen as a possible obstacle to national interoperability. TransCore patents on eGo Plus sticker tag systems are of sufficient concern for the leaders of several toll authorities to raise the issue directly with TransCore management.

A new in-lane toll systems manager is being sought at the Transportation Corridors Agencies in Orange County CA. Jim Rhodes who had the position of deputy director of technology left recently. By one account he was fired by acting CEO Lisa Telles.

The thrust of reports we have is it was felt he was too close to TransCore which has maintained and operated toll systems equipment, both electronic tolling and coin machines for many years.

Tracy Marks is the new President of TransCore ITS taking over from John Simler. That puts Marks in direct charge of tolls and traffic management projects of the company. Chairman and CEO of Roper Industries (the holding company for TransCore) Brian Jellison is quoted as saying the handover of day to day management to Tracy Marks allows John Simler to "focus on strategic growth opportunities in the broad RF segment."

2012-07-21: TransCore has won a front-end toll contract to do Texas "statewide toll integration and maintenance" in competition with Raytheon (teamed with ETCC, VESystems) and Telvent. This means TransCore takes over from Raytheon which has run a similar operation for TxDOT for several years.

TransCore is now providing a mobile app for TransSuite, its major traffic management center system. To date a PC or laptop has been needed for TransSuite.

Federal Signal, Kapsch and TransCore, the three big suppliers of toll equipment in north America are all expected to announce three-way readers later this year. East coast tollers say three-mode readers would be a huge advance toward regional interoperability arrangements, and that the big three have each said they have such a product in development and are close to releasing the news.

Yesterday we were asked to publish an official Utah Department of Transportation retraction of comments in a report (2011-07-26) saying that the TransCore Encompass 6 readers were reading 6C tags poorly compared to the read performance of Sirit IDentity 5100 readers.

The nation's second biggest toll authority seems to be backing out of a decision May 25 by their Board of Commissioners construction committee to award a $81.9m contract to ETC Corp for replacing their toll system.