Skip to main content

Oklahoma turnpikes go cashless

OTA says there were 500 crashes at toll booths from 2015-21
By Adam Hill November 26, 2024 Read time: 2 mins
OTA says PikePass is the most cost-effective way to travel Oklahoma turnpikes (© Trong Nguyen | Dreamstime.com)

Tolling is now cashless on all 12 Oklahoma turnpikes - a conversion process which cost nearly $60 million over the last seven years.

Users will now pay via PikePass and PlatePay.

The last one to switch to open road tolling was the I-44/Will Rogers Turnpike corridor between Tulsa and the Missouri state line.

It means that motorists can travel through cash lanes and pay them later online instead, with signage in place alerting drivers to keep moving.

Demolition of the toll booths and toll plaza areas is expected to begin after Thanksgiving, and this will lead to some lane closures, says Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA).

Safety was a factor in the move to all-electronic tolling: OTA says there were more than 500 crashes at tolling booths in the six years up to 2021.

PlatePay cameras photograph a vehicle’s licence plate, enabling the authority to send the vehicle’s registered owner an invoice.

Motorists without a PikePass will receive a bill in the mail or can pay online at www.platepay.com "about five days after travelling a turnpike".

OTA says PikePass is the most cost-effective way to travel Oklahoma turnpikes, and its toll tag offers seamless travel on turnpikes within states including Kansas, Texas and some toll roads in Colorado and Florida. 

The conversion began with testing on a small section of the Creek Turnpike in Tulsa in 2017. By 2021, the John Kilpatrick Turnpike corridor in Oklahoma City was the first to convert to cashless tolling. 

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • TMCs reflect New York State of mind for Kapsch TrafficCom
    June 30, 2025
    Company will operate traffic management centres in Rochester and Hornell
  • Cellular communications drive the way forward for tolling
    January 18, 2012
    For more than 20 years prior to joining the ITS industry, Mike Payne of Idris, part of Federal Signal Technologies, worked for Vodafone - the world's biggest mobile operator. Here, he considers how the road tolling sector can grow and learn from the cellular industry. The global cellphone has been one of the most successful collaborative technology projects in the last 30 years. Mobile phone technology developed throughout the 20th century with the first public service in the early 70s. This was followed by
  • Canada looks to HOT lanes to tackle congestion
    March 16, 2017
    David Crawford sees an evidence-based approach to HOT lane conversions. Canada’s first high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes opened on 16 September 2016 as a pilot on a 16.5km section of existing high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes running in both directions along Toronto’s Queen Elizabeth Way. Promised in two recent budgets
  • Robust enforcement strategy needed for free flow toll roads
    January 10, 2012
    Timidity has no place in effective enforcement operations on free-flow toll roads, says the NRA's Cathal Masteron. What's needed is a robust strategy which starts big and reduces in size over time, rather than starts small and gains a reputation for being easy to avoid