Ironing Out ETC Bugs

The primary function of an electronic toll collection system is to offer subscribers cash-free transactions while reducing the number of stops, time spent waiting to pay a toll and fuel consumption.

In regards to toll agencies, the advantages of ETC come in the form of less dependency on toll plazas, decreased operation expense and increased revenues.

Essentially, ETC has increased toll plaza efficiency while improving commute times.

According to the Frost & Sullivan Automotive Group, North America accounts for over 4,500 of the estimated 8,800 ETC lanes worldwide. As far as transponders are concerned, the U.S. represents 53.4% of the global market or 7,852,200 tags.

Concurrent with the rising popularity of ETC in North America are contrary issues that toll authorities must deal with on a regular basis.

For example, this past June officials for Virginia?s Chesapeake Expressway waived tolls?$2 for two-axle vehicles?in an effort to relieve northbound traffic near the North Carolina border after two separate incidents caused backup which led to a large number of vehicles leading to the toll plaza at once.

In response, engineers are currently considering options on northbound lanes such as designating an exact-change lane in order to handle unanticipated traffic on the $116 million expressway that opened in May. Toll officials set up an exact-change lane and had workers stand by to make change for waiting motorists during heavier-than-anticipated traffic on the southbound lanes.

In another case, commuters on San Francisco?s Bay Bridge are stopping at the FasTrak-only tollbooths. While some have attributed this unnecessary stop to habit, others feel that it is necessary to hear the validating "ping" that confirms that the toll has been paid. Caltrans officials haven?t heard complaints about full-stoppers at booths, according to the San Francisco Gate News, but with two more Bay Bridge ETC lanes recently opened and users of FasTrak expected to increase, ETC-user inexperience may become a factor.

Finally in Dallas, the North Texas Tollway Authority no longer allows motorists to take a transponder from one vehicle and use it in another?one tag assigned to one car. Violators of this rule have been assessed a $25 penalty.

According to the Tollway Authority, the fines are related to increased video enforcement, which began at the beginning of the year as the number of toll violators eclipsed 20,000 per day.

Stories such as these are becoming commonplace as ETC systems become more popular.

Transportation Management + Engineering decided to take a closer look at some of the current issues involving ETC. Discussions and research on ETC led to the conclusion that these five issues were at the forefront of the industry:

• Bottlenecks before and after toll-booths;

• New ETC users stopping in ETC lanes;

• Speeding through ETC lanes;

• Motorists without transponders using ETC lanes; and

• Unjustified violation notifications.

Transportation Management + Engineering sought commentary from two different sources for this article. First is Richard Frasetto, supervisor, toll security, Delaware River Port Authority of Pennsylvania/New Jersey.

Also participating is Alan Allegretto, chief operating officer toll service for TransCore Government Service Group, Dallas.

It was the intention of Transportation Management + Engineering to offer perspective from a toll authority and from a supplier.

Their responses are not based on each others comments, rather the subject matter was seperately presented to both Frasetto and Allegretto. Their comments are as follows:

Richard Frasetto: "Bottlenecks before a toll plaza are affected by placement of ETC and manual toll lanes and the configuration of approaches to the plaza. Typically, heavy queues in manual toll lanes can block ETC traffic from entering ETC lanes. Signage on approaches leading to toll plazas can help by directing ETC and non-ETC traffic into appropriate lanes ahead of the plaza. Here at DRPA, we have two bridge facilities where we can change lane configurations from a manual toll lane to an ETC lane based on traffic demand. As non-ETC traffic demands rise, we increase the number of attended (manual) lanes."

Alan Allegretto: "ETC equipment was designed to handle higher throughput and speeds, but is highly restricted by the physical plaza design and safety issues. Toll lanes are typically 10 ft wide and toll collection personnel often walk the lanes. In effect, many of the current design parameters are constraining the real capability of the technology with outdated plaza designs. Fitting all plaza lanes with ETC (dedicated or multi-mode) capability helps mitigate the throughput issue, but doesn?t resolve the problem entirely. Agencies are forced to impose a low speed restriction and are beginning to enforce these speeds with the threat of pulling tags from patrons. Plaza configuration (lane location) and lane collection modes are critical to a successful public perception campaign for any ETC system. Ultimately, to overcome these obstacles, toll plazas need to be designed for higher vehicular speeds."

Allegretto: "Users stop for many reasons, but mostly out of ignorance and unfamiliarity with a ETC system. Better signage, marketing campaigns and plaza design help to reduce the occurrence. Some agencies use high-speed gates to keep violation rates down and even meter traffic entering the downstream side of the plaza."

Frasetto: "Our patron feedback displays were designed with the word ?go? which illuminates whenever a vehicle enters an ETC lane. The intent was to prevent customers from stopping in the lanes, even violators. This also has led to some confusion, however, because if a valid ETC customer?s tag doesn?t read, the customer is unaware of the problem because the sign says ?go? and a toll assessed. We are looking into modifying our signs to indicate when there is a problem with a tag read. Tolls have an additional cost associated, so its wise to keep our customers informed when their tags are not functioning properly and for our customers to inform the Customer Service Center when they experience problems."

Speeding through ETC lanes

Frasetto: "DRPA decided to use gates to control the speed of vehicles through ETC lanes. Our gates raise when a vehicle enters an ETC lane whether or not a tag is read. In this way, the vehicles tend to slow down with the presence of a gate."

Allegretto: "Excessive speeds in the toll lanes is an ever-increasing problem for agencies that have adopted ETC. Speeding is as common to agencies with mature ETC systems as it is to agencies who are just adopting ETC. In fact, if unchecked, speeding tends to become more of a problem for agencies as their programs mature. Frequent users can become overconfident, paying little or no attention to signage and plaza conditions. In essence, we?ve created the problem by not adapting the plaza to the new technology. Some agencies have responded by incorporating speed detection into the ETC system, sending out warning notices and tag revocation notices to their patrons. The only real way to solve this problem is to change the plaza design to handle higher speeds. The Dallas North Tollway has taken recent strides to adopt more high-speed tolling at major plazas, which has reduced congestion at plazas, encouraged patrons to use a TollTag, and improved safety conditions at plazas.

A New York City agency has very recently stepped up speeding enforcement and begun to revoke drivers? ETC privileges for varying time periods for those drivers who continue to abuse the rules regarding speed. As with the previous issue, customer communication and good signage are necessary to address speeders. However, apart from an effective enforcement plan, such as revoking ETC privileges for a designated time period, speeders are hard to stop."

Allegretto: "Untagged vehicles are always an issue in any ETC system. While the problem will never be eliminated, effective signage and public awareness campaigns best address the issue. Ineffective advance signage, which causes the patron to lack familiarity with the plaza, and restricted plaza design are the leading contributors to this situation. Effective signage is an extremely important tool for use on a toll road with high speed lanes and express ETC lanes where it is dangerous for patrons to make last minute lane changes or stop in the road to try to pay the toll. Good signage is the best way to communicate to drivers, and is the solution along with a violations enforcement program that focuses on the repeat offender."

Frasetto: "Nothing is a substitute for efficient Vehicle Enforcement Systems and violations processing. We have encountered motorists that realize they have gone through an ETC lane by mistake and choose to stop at the toll office and pay cash for the fare. DRPA issues a receipt to these motorists and advises them to sign up for an E-ZPass account and to retain the receipt for when they receive a violation notice in the mail."

Unjustified violation notices

Frasetto: "I?m assuming you are referring to an ETC customer in good standing that receives a violation notice, or a non-ETC customer that receives a notice when that motorist never used the toll road which issued the violation.

Above all else, use good customer service. A customer in good standing that receives a notice is most likely due to the fact that their tag didn?t read and their license plate information was not updated. It is important for customers to update their account information when they change vehicles and/or registrations. I?m not sure why motorists receive violations when they never use the facilities where they were issued. This happened to a fellow employee recently. Her husband received a violation notice for a vehicle he never owned. I can only think of the reason being that there may be duplicate license plates from state-to-state. Also, human error can play a part whereby an image processor may type the wrong letter or number of license plate resulting in a notice being sent to the wrong person. Good quality control measures at the customer service center level can help in this area. Also, the use of OCR software could be a benefit."

Allegretto: "Most agencies go to great lengths to ensure that they do not issue violations in error; however, when it does any number of system-related reasons can cause this to occur. While technical glitches are always a possibility for any complex, real-time system, public perception glitches always seem much harder to bounce back from.

The Violations Processing System should be an integral part of the design for a toll system. This would allow the two systems to be seamlessly integrated together and insure the data collection and processing of both the toll system and the VPC are complementary and supportive of all required functions."