transponders

Denver's E470 toll authority is now using the cheapest transponders we've heard of - 750,000 new ISO 18000 6C sticker tags at $1.25 apiece. They are replacing Title 21 California style hardbodies. The sale of the 6C sticker tags at this price was "part of a package" a Federal Signal officer told us, the other part being supply of their 5402-brand multi-protocol readers.

Neology often offers the cheapest 6C transponders but in the case of E470 we understand Neology quoted around $1.40 apiece.

At Colorado's E470 tollroad they say they've just passed the 3/4 million mark in transponders in use. They passed the half million mark March 2008, so in three years they added the extra quarter million.  Some of this appears to be the result of going all-electronic.

Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) which runs an extensive electronic toll system in the island state is offering the option of cardfree tolling for the first time November 5.

E-470 Public Highway Authority have announced that their EXpressToll accounts are past the quarter million mark with 463k transponders on issue. The Denver metro area has around 2.8m people and probably 2.3m motor vehicles so around one in five vehicles in the area has a transponder. (see note below on FHWA's rubbish statistics)

E470PHA report that accounts by city are:

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels this week stepped in to end the interstate tiff over transponder discounts. Acknowledging the Illinois Tollway was right he wrote to the Indiana Toll Road Oversight Board which supervises the concessionaire company and requested they extend the same treatment to Illinois I-PASS and apparently all E-ZPass group transponder users identically with the 40% discount proposed for local I-Zoom account holders.

South Carolina uses electronic toll equipment that is technically compatible with E-ZPass but they aren't part of E-ZPass and the Inter Agency Group (IAG) that sets equipment standards, negotiates purchase prices for the whole, and most importantly does clearing house operations with toll transponders of one another's members. We wrote in the tenth paragraph of our earlier report that "they (South Carolina) aren't part of the Inter Agency Group."

Mark IV IVHS are shipping a newly styled E-ZPass transponder to South Carolina under that state's brand Palmetto Pass. It will be used on Hilton Head Island SC and at the Greenville Southern Connector SC. The new transponder is about 25 percent less in volume than the existing ones (79cc vs 105cc) and only two-thirds the footprint on the windshield (4.4cm2 vs 6.8cm2).

Florida's Turnpike Enterprise reports the 3 millionth SunPass transponder activated today. The first million took nearly four years from the beginning of electronic tolling on the Turnpike and associated systems in 1999 to the fall of 2003. The second million was rung up in about 21 months by the summer of 2005. The third million has taken about the same year and three-quarters.