transcore

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.

Intermec Inc, a former owner of Amtech, the toll tag segment of TransCore, recently demanded that the Georgia state toll authority (GaSRTA) buy Intermec readers or insist that their vendor buy license rights they claim to hold to multiprotocol readers.

Brian D Jelllison head of Roper Industries Inc, owners of TransCore since 2004 created quite a stir this week calling for Buy America protection to be given to toll system procurements, and suggesting laws favoring US manufactured systems are not being followed.

By early August Oklahoma's turnpikes should all be fully equipped with TransCore's dual mode E6 readers (Encompass 6) to allow a start on a two to three year transition away from the existing hardcase/battery-equipped Allegro transponders to eGo Plus sticker tags. The reader infrastructure will consist of E6 readers installed in 377 toll lanes (plus 23 spares purchased) on ten turnpikes - 400 readers for $6m, they tell us.

North Carolina Turnpike is making a major move toward toll interoperability with purchase of transponders and readers that can cater to the sticker tags of the South and the E-ZPass transponders of the north.

Neology says it has been granted a sole source contract to provide ISO 18000-6B sticker tags for tolling in Mexico.

Toll people got a good belly laugh at the Chicago Tribune recently with their headline that referred to TransCore as a "troubled" company. "Tollway sticks with troubled customer-service firm" ran the headline Dec 17.

TransCore have the contract to modernize the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) toll systems for their seven toll bridges.