Just wave and go with electronic tolls

Drivers using the Windsor-Detroit tunnel linking Canada with the US will shortly be able to pay electronically on both sides of the border. Until now, electronic payment has only been available on the US side. Tunnel president Neal Belitsky said it’s part of a plan to eventually phase out tunnel tokens after 2013. “We’re going to be getting out of the token business,” Belitsky said. “It takes time to buy rolls of tokens. All that is going to disappear. If you look throughout the US or Canada, you can count
November 2, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Drivers using the Windsor-Detroit tunnel linking Canada with the US will shortly be able to pay electronically on both sides of the border. Until now, electronic payment has only been available on the US side.

Tunnel president Neal Belitsky said it’s part of a plan to eventually phase out tunnel tokens after 2013. “We’re going to be getting out of the token business,” Belitsky said.

“It takes time to buy rolls of tokens. All that is going to disappear. If you look throughout the US or Canada, you can count the number of transportation facilities that use tokens ... probably on one hand.”

The electronic system uses Nexpress cards, radio-frequency identification (RFID) cards similar to those used in the NEXUS program. Canadian customers will be able to order a Nexpress card online, load it with funds, then pass through the toll gates quickly and smoothly by waving the card at an electronic reader.

“It’s a lot faster and it’s a lot more convenient,” Belitsky promised.

Belitsky said there are currently about 15,000 tunnel tokens in circulation. He envisions the tunnel will stop selling tokens in early 2013, and stop accepting them entirely at the end of that year. Belitsky said the tunnel will still have attendants, and always accept cash.
Charging, Tolling & RUC

Related Content

  • RedSpeed offers schools automated no-cost stop arm enforcement
    March 28, 2014
    School authorities in the US are turning to automated school bus stop arm enforcement to curb an astonishing number of violations. It is estimated that every year nearly 17,000 American children are sent to emergency rooms as a result of school bus related crashes. And when surveyed, 99% of school bus drivers reported that the most dangerous behaviour they encounter is drivers passing a school bus with its stop sign arm extended. Every day these drivers who violate the extended stop arm signs put at risk
    Read More
  • Shock therapy: jolt for EV charging needed
    October 2, 2018
    As sales of electric vehicles accelerate, the growth of charging infrastructure is in need of a big boost. Graham Anderson reports on whether Europe is up to it. Utilities, technology companies and vehicle manufacturers are battling to put in place new charging networks for electric vehicles (EVs) across Europe in response to a predicted dramatic surge in demand. Market experts believe that rapidly falling battery costs – which make up about one third of the costs of an electric car – and growing
    Read More
  • Olympic challenges in Sochi
    May 27, 2014
    Sporting events always create problems for traffic planners and none more so than the Winter Olympics. It is difficult to think of more diametrically opposite challenges for transport planners than the 2012 Olympics in London and this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi: from a summer event in the heart of a megacity with well established transport infrastructure to winter games with unpredictable weather and events in remote and mountainous locations. The Winter Games are always a challenge and Sochi was no di
    Read More
  • ‘Free’ power for signs, shelters and so much more
    March 17, 2016
    David Crawford looks at the sunny side of the street. Solar power has been relatively slow in entering the transport sector, but a current blossoming of activity bodes well for the large-scale harnessing of an alternative energy that is zero-emission at source and, in practical terms, infinitely renewable. Traffic management and traveller information systems, and actual vehicles, are all emerging as areas for deployment. Meanwhile roads themselves are being viewed as new-style, fossil fuel-free ‘power stati
    Read More

Highlighted Content