Skip to main content

Oklahoma Turnpike to go interoperable

Oklahoma Turnpike (OTA) is in discussion with Kansas Turnpike and North Texas Tollway (NTTA) on the viability of electronic interoperability between the three companies. It is close to agreement with North Texas Tollway and billing of each other’s customers should be in operation by the spring or summer of 2014. Discussions with the Kansas Turnpike are a little further behind and interoperability is likely to happen by the second half of 2014. Director of operations at the OTA, David Machamer, says much o
July 19, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
Oklahoma Turnpike (OTA) is in discussion with Kansas Turnpike and North Texas Tollway (2082 NTTA) on the viability of electronic interoperability between the three companies.  It is close to agreement with North Texas Tollway and billing of each other’s customers should be in operation by the spring or summer of 2014.  Discussions with the Kansas Turnpike are a little further behind and interoperability is likely to happen by the second half of 2014.

Director of operations at the OTA, David Machamer, says much of the work on the legal agreement and business rules for NTTA-OTA interoperability has been accomplished so they are close to going for formal board of directors approval.

There are few hardware issues. Both have E6 multiprotocol readers from 139 Transcore, as does Kansas Turnpike with its K-TAG brand.

The Oklahoma Turnpike system covers large proportion of the state's expressway standard highways, one a designated interstate but most important state routes.  Comprising ten tollroads some urban, others interurban the state turnpike system covers 605 centerline miles, about 1,000km. Toll collection is a mix of electronic toll, and cash toll lanes in an approximate 65/35 ratio.

NTTA is an entirely urban system with three major busy tollroads, two toll bridges and small toll tunnel.  It has no cash toll collection, 77 per cent being by electronic toll transponder and 23 per cent by video toll.

Machamer says interoperability with Kansas Turnpike to their immediate north should not be long after the NTTA arrangements go live.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • WIM industry ponders certification challenge
    April 29, 2019
    It’s hard to pin down the world of Weigh in Motion. Adam Hill asks five of the sector’s leading players about current developments – and whether problems with certification will ever be solved
  • ITS instrumental in reducing Texan congestion
    September 4, 2018
    ITS projects in the Houston area have seen costs crunched – and even a system failure has proved valuable in analysing performance. David Crawford reports on developments in the Lone Star state Savings by Texan public agencies are major factors in the recent ITS Texas awards, recognising beneficial initiatives in bridge strike prevention and traffic intersection control. In the first, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)’s Houston District, covering the state’s most populous city and its surround
  • IBTTA applauds new interstate study
    September 13, 2013
    A new study, Interstate 2.0: Modernising the Interstate Highway System via Toll Finance, by US public policy think tank, the Reason Foundation, details how much it will cost to reconstruct and widen Interstate highways in all 50 states and shows how to pay for the modernisation efforts with toll revenues. It makes the case for lifting the federal prohibition on tolling existing lanes of the Interstate highway system and states: “…as the reality of the cost of Interstate reconstruction and modernisation s
  • Study finds big differences in toll collection cases
    December 16, 2013
    Examination of Norway’s tolling companies finds much to praise, and some criticisms too, as Torill Eidsheim told delegates at the ASECAP conference. The cost of collecting tolls has a substantial effect on the profitability, or otherwise, of tolling companies and is within the company’s control to a far greater degree than, for instance, traffic volumes. And while it is easy to assume that all tolling companies incur similar collection costs, that is not always the case according to Torill Eidsheim, pres