Toll Interoperability Sought as Electronic Systems Grow

This story appears in the May 20 print edition of Transport Topics.

The nation’s large and growing number of highways, bridges and tunnels that are using electronic systems to collect tolls are creating problems for truckers who cross multiple jurisdictions because most systems’ transponders won’t work on other systems.

That has led to truckers’ having to carry a box full of transponders to save time — and sometimes the discounts — that make the electronic systems desirable in the first place to tolling authorities.

As a result, there is a growing demand from truckers and motorists for “interoperability” to streamline the process.

“The current system places a costly burden on companies such as Saia who operate in multiple states and jurisdictions,” said Brian Balius, vice president of linehaul and industrial engineering for Saia Motor Freight Line Inc., based in Johns Creek, Ga.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, more than 30 tolling systems in the United States do not use cash exclusively. Some systems, such as E-ZPass, work on several adjacent facilities, but most of them use different transponder technologies.

State and local officials said they are working on the interoperability issue, but it’s more  difficult than it might seem.

Representatives of about a dozen tolling agencies attended a recent meeting of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association to discuss what it would take to create a fully interoperable system. The goal is to have such a system in place by 2016, but the industry knows that is ambitious.

“It is a complex thing,” said Patrick Jones, executive director and CEO of IBTTA. “It may not be completed by 2016, but we will have made tremendous progress on it.”

Solving the problem isn’t as simple as putting a radio-frequency identification tag on a windshield so the local or state Department of Motor Vehicles or Department of Transportation can read it and process a payment, because systems across the country use different protocols that are incompatible with each other.

The protocols are one problem that must be overcome, and the other hurdle is getting various government agencies to work together.

Each state or tolling authority has its own procedures and accounting systems, and all must agree on fees for collecting and remitting each jurisdiction’s tolls, as well as agree on systems for catching and punishing violators.

According to IBTTA, annual revenue from tolling in the United States is about $12 billion, with California, New York, Texas and Florida collecting the most.

“The technology and data-sharing capabilities exist that could simplify this cumbersome process if the various governments would work toward a common collection process or clearinghouse,” said Saia’s Balius. “I would support a diversion of some of these [tolling] funds to develop a cohesive solution to this issue.”

“We’re asking our vendors to provide a higher standard of readers that can read more than one transponder type,” said Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, executive director of Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise, an agency of the Florida Department of Transportation with a tolling system called SunPass. “Georgia has Peach Pass. I would like SunPass [users] to be able to go to Georgia and use Peach Pass, and have Peach Pass users come to Florida and use SunPass.”

In Gutierrez-Scaccetti’s scenario, the two systems would operate just as seamlessly as two banks’ ATMs can read the cards of each other’s customers and process their transactions. But technology is not the only challenge.

Governments “have things we charge each other to process transactions,” she said. “It’s not that complicated from a technology standpoint.”

Regional uniformity already exists on some level. For example, the E-ZPass Interagency Group consists of 25 agencies in 14 states. Separate technologies in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia and Massachusetts also have common compatibility with the E-ZPass system. IBTTA’s Jones said systems such as that need to expand, and the industry knows it.

“The threshold is whether Florida and New York are sharing [tolling] information,” he said.

There is another challenge beyond technology, Jones said: “It involves business rules, things that happen in the back office,” where technology that handles financial data needs to keep up with devices on the road.

While the industry appears most comfortable at this point with radio-frequency identification, other technologies also are available.

Several technology companies said they are developing systems that they say could eliminate the interoperability problem, and not all of them rely on RFID.

GeoToll Inc. is working on an application that would allow toll readers to automatically recognize drivers through the GPS systems in their cellphones, even if those phones aren’t running the app — similar to the way law enforcement agencies can track cellphones.

The technology “leverages the electronics in a smart phone,” said Tim McGuckin, CEO of GeoToll, Cooper City, Fla. “You can download the GPS coordinates of every toll facility within the United States. . . . The tag is essentially dead until the GPS in the phone determines that you’re approaching a toll [plaza] with a reader, and it wakes up the tag.”

However, McGuckin said that winning over the industry would require GeoToll to make the case that its top priority — interoperability — is being met.

For tolling jurisdictions, McGuckin said, “revenue assurance is key to them, and they’re most confident in a solution that’s RFID-based. . . . They know where they’re going to get their money from. They know where to bill. They hate tracking down phones.”

Nonetheless, the company is discussing the technology with several states, including Colorado, Utah, Georgia and Washington, he said.

Another breakthrough may come from technology designed to serve the insurance market. Israel-based PayGo Systems produces a pay-as-you-drive system that, like GeoToll, connects to cellphones and collects data about where drivers go.

PayGo recently announced that the technology will be made available for tolling applications. The system reading the app will process the toll payment just as an RFID reader would, the company said.

“The PayGo system can be used for tolling in two different ways,” said Sybille Kranz, marketing manager for PayGo’s German technology partner, Telit Communications PLC. “The traditional way is recording all driving activities on designated roads such as motorways. A second way . . . is to create zones — urban, suburban, rural, county, municipality, etc. — and to charge different amounts per [mile] or minutes driven in a certain zone at a certain time.”

Kranz said the system could provide a different charge for driving in an urban zone during rush hour than making the same trip in off-peak hours. Currently, however, charging different tolls for different times of the day is done in all states.

Some tolling systems use video recognition of license plates to record toll plaza violations. But that technology has limited potential as a method for handling payments, officials said.

“There’s a lot of effort out there to improve the camera systems and [eliminate] the complexities” of identifying the license plate, said Neil Gray, director of government affairs for IBTTA. “Florida has [about] 140 different vanity plates . . . so [the problem is], can we pick that up out of the background clutter?”

Another thing that adds clutter is a frame — often from a car or truck dealer — that can block information at the edges of the license plate.

Gray said one idea to augment license-plate recognition is to establish “fingerprints” on vehicles — some distinguishing mark that systems will recognize. This “fingerprint” could be part of the license plate, but it also could be a bumper sticker or some other distinguishing feature. It would serve as a backup recognition point in case a camera can’t read a plate.

Irvine, Calif.-based Cofiroute USA has developed a system it describes as more in line with newer on-road technology.

“Most of the technology providers have software that evolved many years ago that they have added caches and updates to,” said Jan Mittermeier, Cofiroute’s chief operating officer, “but there is no complete trip-reconciliation process that’s easily managed . . . where you can add any type of account or feature to it and have it generate your own trial balance for interface with your clients’ accounting software.”

The idea, Mittermeier said, is to make the managing of such financial information as simple as working with a business’ own online bank accounts. The Cofiroute system was developed in conjunction with TollPlus Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz., specifically for Orange County, Calif., and its State Route 91 express lanes — but Mittermeier said the same concept can be deployed for any toll road or toll operator.

Jones said IBTTA is keeping members and staff of key congressional committees up to speed on tolling technology initiatives and will ask for funding for two projects. One would be for the creation of so-called “second tags” that could augment the RFID tag issued by a specific state and would be uniform throughout the nation. The second request is for funding to help state departments of motor vehicles with a backup system, possibly based on the recognition of license plates.