JJ Eden, President and CEO of the Alliance for Toll Interoperability, talks to Jason Barnes about the new inter-agency hub, which will facilitate national transactions
When it comes to achieving interoperability, the sheer diversity of technologies in operation in the US is perhaps the tolling industry’s greatest defining characteristic and its biggest challenge. The situation is in stark contrast with some other regions of the world, such as Europe where the use of common front-end Dedicated Short-Range
JJ Eden, President and CEO of the Alliance for Toll Interoperability, talks to Jason Barnes about the new inter-agency hub, which will facilitate national transactions
When it comes to achieving interoperability, the sheer diversity of technologies in operation in the US is perhaps the tolling industry’s greatest defining characteristic and its biggest challenge. The situation is in stark contrast with some other regions of the world, such as Europe where the use of common front-end Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) technology operating at 5.8GHz at least hints at the prospect of concessions being able to speak to each other. And yet, despite its manifest difficulties, the US is set to steal a lead when it comes to being able to reconcile payments across numerous agencies operating on a land mass thousands of miles across; in July, following a successful pilot, the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) and Secure Interagency Flow LLC (SIF, a joint venture of533 EGIS Projects and 480 Sanef ITS America) announced an agreement for the supply, implementation and operation of a nationwide North American interoperability hub which will use Licence Plate Reader (LPR) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solutions to reconcile tolling transactions between agencies from across the continent.
3525 AECOM and ATI President/CEO. This elicited 11 responses which were reduced to a shortlist of four and resulted in a six-month pilot which ran from March 2012. The pilot involved agencies from six states – Colorado, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas and produced some interesting results, he states.
“The hub provides a back office facility for those agencies which have signed up to its use. It allows them to collect transactions from toll account holders from across state lines. So, for example, 30 per cent of commercial vehicles in Oklahoma have an E-ZPass tag. At present, for another agency to capture a transaction from one of those vehicles cross-state there has to be enforcement legislation in place – and that’s not been passed in all states – and it can be expensive; sending up to three reminder letters against a single transaction results in sharply diminishing returns. Using the hub, it’ll simply be a matter of passing a licence plate capture to the vehicle’s home state and reconciling against the owner’s existing account.
“Obviously, as the pilot demonstrated, those states which are farther apart can probably expect to see fewer matches from each other but one of the pilot states stood to recoup $1 million which would previously have cost thousands of dollars to go after. The hub offers significant advantages to those agencies which use it.”
Initially, agencies will be able to plug into the account details of other agencies but next stages, Eden notes, include being able to reconcile transactions against non-account holders as well as linking into other, regional tolling hubs and, potentially, those for transit, parking and fast food. The end aim is a seamless mobility account with expanded customer services and convenience which will enable agencies to reduce costs even further.
Initial hub go-live took place after an ATI-hosted webinar for members at the beginning of October this year but even prior to that the response from the tolling industry had been excellent, Eden says – not least because the pilot demonstrated that everyone stands to make money from the service provided by the hub. A two-phased approach is being pursued whereby the hub will initially mirror the set-up of the pilot scheme and full national coverage will follow within six to 12 months (with a presumption towards the former).
“I see the two as continuing to be complementary,” he says. “The driver of change at the moment is all-electronic tolling. Prior to that, there was still a cash payment option. RFID will continue to be viewed by most agencies as the more accurate technology.
“People can ask whether video will remain the best solution in the longer-term but I ask them to define ‘long term’. In-vehicle solutions are seen by many as the way forward but even if the auto manufacturers decided tomorrow to incorporate some form of tag into new vehicles it’d still take a decade before we had a viable installed base – and you’ve got to decide ahead of that exactly which protocol you’re going to adopt. Reference is made to video being a ‘patch’ or a bridging technology but I think it’s at least a ’10-year short-term’ solution.”
Unless, of course, something else happens along in the meantime; Eden is one of many who’ve sat up and taken notice of the smart phone revolution. The ATI, for instance, has hosted webinars with GeoToll, which is offering agencies an ISO 18000 6C standard-compatible cell phone-based tolling solution. Interest, he notes, has been significant with such events seeing sign-up from over 200 participants.
“Companies such as493 Apple and the younger generation of travellers want everything to reside on the smart phone, making it more of a dependence device. There are still issues to overcome, such as battery life, but we’re finding that users habitually leave phones plugged in so that they can access music, for instance. Another challenge is having to deal with multiple phones in a single vehicle but the fact is that we already have excellent market penetration.”
What we are seeing is a development of the electronic purse or e-wallet concept which has been heralded for decades and some previously major difficulties are already things of the past. Apps which provide user identification are now readily accepted by government agencies, Eden notes; “We can’t dismiss the potential influence of disruptive technologies. Just a few years ago, even the 6C tag was considered a disruptive technology. Now, it’s already mainstream,” he adds.
1816 European Union, finding a private-sector operator willing to take on that burden has thus far not happened.
And yet, with the hub, SIF takes on all of the risk of operation. It puts up and operates the system and its fees are paid on a decreasing basis according to volume – so, for example, it will receive $0.09 per transaction up to a few thousand per month and this will decrease on a sliding scale to $0.04 by the time that the total of all transactions reaches 4.9 million per month.
“This means that SIF will see slight increases in revenue as volumes grow but we’ve left the contract pretty open such that it can generate income by marketing other services such as image captures for enforcement applications,” Eden continues.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the setting-up and deployment of the hub, he feels.
“There were a lot of nay-sayers when we set out to do this – people felt that there was too much risk for the vendor, and that we wouldn’t get agency buy-in. It’s a common issue with the toll industry; people get very close to doing something new but don’t take that last step because they fear it’s not a ‘perfect’ solution. Well, you’ll never get that – technology is constantly being replaced.
“It’s easy to put something on the ‘too difficult’ pile. Go back 20 years and look at E-ZPass; people were saying that with 26 million deployed tags change would simply be too hard to accomplish. That’s not the only example in this industry but we have to do something to move forward, even if that means using an imperfect solution while a better one is being developed. If we wait too long we risk collapsing under the burden of indecision. The public will compare developments in areas such as cell phones with tag interoperability and find us wanting.
“Perhaps most of all people have to consider that a technology decision made today needn’t be forever.”
When it comes to achieving interoperability, the sheer diversity of technologies in operation in the US is perhaps the tolling industry’s greatest defining characteristic and its biggest challenge. The situation is in stark contrast with some other regions of the world, such as Europe where the use of common front-end Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) technology operating at 5.8GHz at least hints at the prospect of concessions being able to speak to each other. And yet, despite its manifest difficulties, the US is set to steal a lead when it comes to being able to reconcile payments across numerous agencies operating on a land mass thousands of miles across; in July, following a successful pilot, the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) and Secure Interagency Flow LLC (SIF, a joint venture of
Progress to date
The ATI was founded in 2009 to promote and implement interoperability between states for the benefit of both customers and member agencies. Currently, it boasts some 43 toll road operators from the US and Canada as members and work to realise the new hub began with a Request for Proposals (RfP) around two years ago, says JJ Eden, Vice President – Director of Tolling at“The hub provides a back office facility for those agencies which have signed up to its use. It allows them to collect transactions from toll account holders from across state lines. So, for example, 30 per cent of commercial vehicles in Oklahoma have an E-ZPass tag. At present, for another agency to capture a transaction from one of those vehicles cross-state there has to be enforcement legislation in place – and that’s not been passed in all states – and it can be expensive; sending up to three reminder letters against a single transaction results in sharply diminishing returns. Using the hub, it’ll simply be a matter of passing a licence plate capture to the vehicle’s home state and reconciling against the owner’s existing account.
“Obviously, as the pilot demonstrated, those states which are farther apart can probably expect to see fewer matches from each other but one of the pilot states stood to recoup $1 million which would previously have cost thousands of dollars to go after. The hub offers significant advantages to those agencies which use it.”
Initially, agencies will be able to plug into the account details of other agencies but next stages, Eden notes, include being able to reconcile transactions against non-account holders as well as linking into other, regional tolling hubs and, potentially, those for transit, parking and fast food. The end aim is a seamless mobility account with expanded customer services and convenience which will enable agencies to reduce costs even further.
Initial hub go-live took place after an ATI-hosted webinar for members at the beginning of October this year but even prior to that the response from the tolling industry had been excellent, Eden says – not least because the pilot demonstrated that everyone stands to make money from the service provided by the hub. A two-phased approach is being pursued whereby the hub will initially mirror the set-up of the pilot scheme and full national coverage will follow within six to 12 months (with a presumption towards the former).
Technology choices
In many respects, video was the only real near-term choice of a technology for a national interoperability effort. Any attempt to force an RFID-based alternative within a realistic timeframe would be nigh-impossible because of the multiplicity of deployed systems and vested interest. Eden, however, denies that once deployed nationally a hub based on LPR heralds the end of the toll tag.“I see the two as continuing to be complementary,” he says. “The driver of change at the moment is all-electronic tolling. Prior to that, there was still a cash payment option. RFID will continue to be viewed by most agencies as the more accurate technology.
“People can ask whether video will remain the best solution in the longer-term but I ask them to define ‘long term’. In-vehicle solutions are seen by many as the way forward but even if the auto manufacturers decided tomorrow to incorporate some form of tag into new vehicles it’d still take a decade before we had a viable installed base – and you’ve got to decide ahead of that exactly which protocol you’re going to adopt. Reference is made to video being a ‘patch’ or a bridging technology but I think it’s at least a ’10-year short-term’ solution.”
Unless, of course, something else happens along in the meantime; Eden is one of many who’ve sat up and taken notice of the smart phone revolution. The ATI, for instance, has hosted webinars with GeoToll, which is offering agencies an ISO 18000 6C standard-compatible cell phone-based tolling solution. Interest, he notes, has been significant with such events seeing sign-up from over 200 participants.
“Companies such as
What we are seeing is a development of the electronic purse or e-wallet concept which has been heralded for decades and some previously major difficulties are already things of the past. Apps which provide user identification are now readily accepted by government agencies, Eden notes; “We can’t dismiss the potential influence of disruptive technologies. Just a few years ago, even the 6C tag was considered a disruptive technology. Now, it’s already mainstream,” he adds.
Setting the case
The hub compares directly with the European Electronic Toll Service (EETS), in the sense that within that concept a private-sector organisation, the ‘EETS service provider’, operates essentially like a credit card provider and guarantees payments to toll agencies. There the similarities end in that, although the EETS remains a political ambition with theAnd yet, with the hub, SIF takes on all of the risk of operation. It puts up and operates the system and its fees are paid on a decreasing basis according to volume – so, for example, it will receive $0.09 per transaction up to a few thousand per month and this will decrease on a sliding scale to $0.04 by the time that the total of all transactions reaches 4.9 million per month.
“This means that SIF will see slight increases in revenue as volumes grow but we’ve left the contract pretty open such that it can generate income by marketing other services such as image captures for enforcement applications,” Eden continues.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the setting-up and deployment of the hub, he feels.
“There were a lot of nay-sayers when we set out to do this – people felt that there was too much risk for the vendor, and that we wouldn’t get agency buy-in. It’s a common issue with the toll industry; people get very close to doing something new but don’t take that last step because they fear it’s not a ‘perfect’ solution. Well, you’ll never get that – technology is constantly being replaced.
“It’s easy to put something on the ‘too difficult’ pile. Go back 20 years and look at E-ZPass; people were saying that with 26 million deployed tags change would simply be too hard to accomplish. That’s not the only example in this industry but we have to do something to move forward, even if that means using an imperfect solution while a better one is being developed. If we wait too long we risk collapsing under the burden of indecision. The public will compare developments in areas such as cell phones with tag interoperability and find us wanting.
“Perhaps most of all people have to consider that a technology decision made today needn’t be forever.”
