Asking for change

Jack Finn is used to seeing the arms up.

As tolling becomes a more explored option in the U.S., there are more questions rising from the public and private sectors. Finn is one to turn to for answers.

However, the senior vice president at HNTB Corp., Wayne, N.J., appears to be battling free time these days. I was able to catch him on his cell phone in Miami during the middle of a business trip. “(HNTB) sees the tolling industry growing in the U.S., which means I’m traveling a lot,” said Finn. “It used to be just short trips, but they have grown to longer trips.”

New schedules aside, I got the most out of Finn on this particular day, as we covered some of the fast-developing issues in the toll industry, including value pricing, GPS systems and the highway funding trend of the future.

TM+E: I believe the Pennsylvania Turnpike was the first official toll road in America. Do you think it was ahead of its time?
Jack Finn: The Pennsylvania Turnpike was the first modern turnpike that had high-speed traffic on it. But the Pennsylvania Turnpike was not totally funded by future tolls; it was partially sponsored by state funds. The Maine Turnpike followed and that was the first modern toll road that was entirely financed by future toll revenue. I think the Pennsylvania Turnpike was ahead of its time. The idea of turnpikes has been around much longer than the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but building a high-speed roadway and then really wondering whether people would be willing to pay a fee to use it was ahead of its time. And if I recall I think it cut the travel time from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg from 12 hours to six. It turned out that they had much more traffic on it than they had originally envisioned.

TM+E: So people embraced the Pennsylvania Turnpike quickly?
JF: Yes, they did. It was embraced very quickly compared to the estimates at the time and that’s what really kicked off the era of turnpikes. It was the Pa Turnpike going ahead and finding out that the public was willing to pay to get there in a reasonable amount of time.

TM+E: Talk about the evolution of electronic toll collection over the last decade.
JF: Electronic toll collection, at least in the U.S., started in the late 1980s in Dallas on the North Tollway. Interesting enough when it first went on there the vendor at the time had to convince them to put it in. In fact they charged the customers a nickel more per toll, per transaction for the convenience of using a tag. Again, like with the Pennsylvania Turnpike, they weren’t sure whether or not the people would embrace it and it became a great success.

Then in the early ’90s several of the toll authorities started to adopt electronic tolling, and the first nonstop, high-speed toll plazas were built on the Oklahoma Turnpike around 1992.

In the last six or seven years it has really taken off. Most major toll roads offer electronic toll collection of some sort. Most new toll plazas today are built with high-speed lanes as part of the new plazas, and now there is an push of going back and retrofitting existing barrier plazas and removing the booths and allowing the safe travel at high speeds through those booths.

TM+E: What’s the next step for electronic toll collection? Has it reached its peak yet?
JF: No, I don’t think it’s reached its peak at all. I think we’re going to see more and more users signing up for electronic toll collection for the convenience of it. Some of the more urban areas, like the New York City area, in the peak hours some facilities may be up in the 80% penetration rate. But in many other parts of the country it could be down in the 30-40% range. I think we’ll see that significantly increasing to the majority of users using some sort of a tag.

The next evolution is open road tolling. I think we’re going to see a lot of HOT (high-occupancy toll) lanes or managed lanes like Rte. 91 in California at open road tolling. There will be certain parts of a road or certain toll roads that will be exclusively for electronic toll collection or electronic tag users.

TM+E: HOT lanes have received criticism, but could be the answer to help combat congestion in this country. Are we starting to accept HOT lanes a little more with the increase in congestion problems?
JF: When it was first introduced in California, Rte. 91 was the first one, and there was skepticism. They called them the Lexus lanes. People were concerned it would only be of benefit to the affluent and the rich. But they have found it really benefits many economic classes. For people who punch a clock it is valuable to get to work on time or to pick up a child from a daycare center without being charged an additional fee. There comes a time in everybody’s life when they need to get somewhere on time and are willing to pay a small amount to ensure they’ll get there. Everybody has the option of using it and everyone can benefit. Plus they did find the free lanes saw the benefit of taking people out of the free lanes that were willing to pay a toll. It didn’t cost the people in those free lanes any money to get them out of that free facility. So everybody benefited. Recent surveys have shown there’s a 70-80% acceptance of HOT lanes. Minnesota just announced that it is coming out with a HOT lane and probably will do several more. I do think we’ll see HOT lanes or toll lanes as a part of the transportation solution in the U.S.

TM+E: Is the idea of charging people more during peak hours (value pricing) also gaining acceptance in this country?
JF: There are a couple of ways you can do value pricing based on the time of day or the actual congestion level. Two HOT lanes in California—Rte. 91 and I-15—include variable pricing. They charge based on the adjacent congestion on the free road, which they really have to because no one would pay a high toll if the free roadway was flowing. If everything gets congested they’ll raise the toll to minimize the amount of people using it to guarantee the flow is maintained.

There are a lot of other mainline toll roads like the New Jersey Turnpike, which have gone to a peak-hour pricing. It’s another side benefit to electronic toll collection. Not only is it convenient to the user, it’s also more convenient for the agencies to implement peak-hour pricing which is really the best current traffic demand tool we have. And I think a lot of the environmentalists are embracing this as well because it’s using the current capacity as best we can by managing the demand.

TM+E: Will there ever be one universal tag, which can be used on every toll system in the U.S.?
JF: To have a universal one that’s accepted all across the country . . . I think we are quite a few years away from being able to do that. And it’s not the technology, it’s the business rules of the different agencies and different states to come to an agreement. E-ZPass in the Northeast probably has 10 or 11 states that are members and it includes about 21 toll agencies. With one tag and one account you can drive from Virginia to Maine and just receive one bill. It’s certainly feasible. Florida has several different toll authorities and you can use the same SunPass tag and drive across all of those toll roads. So it’s really a bureaucratic issue of being able to do it across the country.

TM+E: Europe seems to be ahead of the U.S. in terms of tolling. Why are they the front-runner in this type of technology?
JF: It’s a difficult answer. In general they have accepted toll roads a little more than the U.S. They’ve been accustomed to tolling, and electronic toll collection is just an extension of that. Right now Germany is trying to experiment with a GPS system for heavy trucks where they will charge the trucks a toll based on the roadways and the weight of the truck. But even that is running into some stumbling blocks. They’ve announced several delays to that system but they are certainly trying to forge ahead with a GPS system, which may be the future within the U.S.

TM+E: What are the benefits of the GPS system?
JF: You don’t need any readers. They have a satellite system in Europe that can read the vehicles and where they have traveled. They don’t need to have tolling points; they can track every road you have used and in that way they know what time of day you are traveling and the demand of the roadway so they can truly vary the tolling based on time of day, based on what roadways you want to use.

I also think the reason Europe is a little more ahead than the U.S. is the private sector is a little more involved over there. And I think that is potentially because of the way Europe handles the tax situation on private investment in infrastructure. It’s more conducive in Europe and a lot of the international countries to have the private sector involved in investment. Those private sectors are leading the way in the technology area.

TM+E: The Texas Department of Transportation just released a ruling allowing toll lanes on all of its newly constructed highways. How monumental is that?
JF: I think it’s very monumental. Texas right now is probably leading the way for states to pioneer extensive uses of toll roads. They passed legislation last year that has a major transportation bill that allows the DOT many tools to create infrastructure, and a lot of it is based on tolls. And I know their policy had been that before they look at any new capacity they wanted to analyze it as a toll feasible roadway before they threw precious state dollars at it. I think a lot of the states are watching to see what happens in Texas and see how they fare.

TM+E: If funding for the next long-term highway bill comes up short do you see more private organizations entering the game and willing to build these roads for the price of a toll?
JF: The reauthorization is going to have a major impact on the toll industry in the U.S. ISTEA and TEA-21 both had major increases in federal funding in transportation through the gas tax, and it is now getting to the point where it may be unpopular to raise the gas tax may any further than it is. There is certainly going to be some funding shortfall for transportation, and to cover that shortfall I think tolls will be one of the tools they will look at, whether it will be the public sector now introducing tolls or the inclusion of the private sector in toll facilities. Many states over the last two years have taken a hard look at tolls, and states that have never traditionally had tolls are looking to introduce them.

TM+E: Two states which have experienced high growth but do not have toll facilities are Arizona and Nevada. Do you see toll facilities hitting those areas in the near future?
JF: I believe they have indicated that they want to take a look at it. I don’t know if we’ll see them implementing the option in the very near future, but I think somewhere down the road it’s quite possible. There are other states like North Carolina that have definitely moved ahead, and then there are other states that have all expressed an interest in pursuing toll roads.

TM+E: Why are there states still without toll facilities in the U.S.?
JF: In the ’40s and ’50s certain states in the U.S. started to build the tolls, but then along came the Interstate Highway Program that gave all states the mechanism to pay for the major highways. The feds, however, said they could not use tolls on those roadways. The turnpike era sort of died and a lot of states stayed away from it because the one bad rap on toll roads was the inconvenience of the toll plazas. Now with electronic toll collection it should not be an issue anymore. They can drive through at 50-60 mph. Now that the one criticism is gone I think a lot of states are turning back to toll roads the same way they went for them initially in the 1940s and ’50s. The feds are not going to be able to support them financially for what they need to do in their own state. TME