Automation May Make Toll Roads More Common 585
bfwebster writes "Here in Denver, we have E-470, a toll section of the 470 beltway, that uses the usual transponder attached to your windshield. Fair enough, and I make use of it, particularly in driving to the airport. But they've just implemented new technology on E-470 that allows anyone to drive through the automated toll gates. If you don't have a transponder, it takes a photo of your license plate and sends a monthly bill to your house. As a result, the company that runs E-470 plans to close all human-staffed toll booths by mid-summer. And as an article in this morning's Rocky Mountain News notes, 'Such a system could be deployed on other roads, including some that motorists now use free. The result: a new source of money for highways and bridges badly in need of repair.' You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned."
rental cars? (Score:3, Interesting)
seriously.. if I rent a car- I'm going to be back billed later by the agency?
yeah- that's not an issue at all...
First Canadian! (Score:3, Interesting)
First Canadian to post we have had this in Ontario for years now... called the 407.
It's not a bad technology. However here, there is a crazy charge for the photo portion that basically makes it impractical not to have a transponder. Each time you don't have a transponder and get photoed... the charge is like 6 dollars or something. A monthly transponder is 2 dollars. So I just keep a transponder even though I don't use regularly.
The only advice I would give is to make sure the 'toll' period is reasonable. In the 90s recessions, our government signed the highway away to a private company for a 99 year lease. Most other places in the world, it is common to see 10-20 year lease.
Of course isn't this what the gas tax supposed to be for :) Oh the joys of non-dedicated government taxation.
Don't assume Red Light Cameras are gone yet... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sydney are all automated (Score:2, Interesting)
Almost every toll booth in australia is automated. Just recently, the Sydney harbor bridge become completely automated. The biggest problem is that when you don't have an "E-Tag" on your car, the bill gets sent to your house with a $10 or more Administration Fee... So your $3 toll becomes $13 everytime you drive through
Re:Old news... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been done in the states for at least a decade. Toll tags and such are commonplace in the metro areas, and now there's even talk of turning some of our interstates into toll roads.
I vehemently oppose the idea of toll roads on those "major artery" roads that connect our nation. It's one thing to add a toll road in an urban area where there are plenty of alternate paths, but placing an arbitrary price on traveling from one place to another is essentially restricting the right of travel. Our government should not be in the business of making it more expensive for me to go see my family 100 miles away.
Re:Old news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Various interstates have been toll roads for DECADES. This is nothing new. I-95 is a toll road through Delaware. I-76 across Pennsylvania and I-76/80 in Ohio. I-44 in Oklahoma and I-35 in Kansas.
The reason States do this is so they can maintain their own roads, rather than beg the U.S. for money.
Already in Toronto -- really bad for travellers (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no way to pay manually. Sections that are toll aren't well marked. Cost isn't clearly defined and changes as a function of time and/or traffic density. So when turning in the rental car there's no way to determine the charges for tolls.
Months after the trip I got a bill from the car rental agency: cost of tolls + several taxes + surcharge by the car rental agency + a billing fee.
Can you tell I'm not a fan of this technology?! Car rental agency added costs were more than twice the cost of tolls.
Re:rental cars? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you've rented a car, then it's very obviously not an issue for you. You're already agreeing to plead guilty to any traffic ticket the car receives while it is rented to you (e.g., red light camera tickets) and have it charged to your credit card.
Re:Old news... (Score:2, Interesting)
In Israel this has always been the only method. There have never been any toll booths - you drive onto toll roads at full speed, just like any other highway. It's really, really convenient.
This is not an issue of the US being behind in technology and now catching up. It is an issue of the US being ahead in privacy, and now regressing.
In Israel, the company that runs the toll roads has full access to everyone's auto registration data. They also have special police powers to impound your car without trial if they think you owe them money.
I wish the US the best of luck.
About that privacy thing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an old fart. Knowing my car is going to be tracked gives me the willies, just as knowing the NSA is reading all my emails and IMs, listening to all my phone calls, and watching all my web surfing.
But look. It can't be prevented. Cameras are getting to be so small and cheap, and computing power is so ubiquitous, that it won't be long, a decade or two at the most, before 90% of the population has a full time camera as their collar button, broadcasting to a public server and archived for posterity, and every bozo that wants to will be able to see anything desired.
I am serious about this. It cannot be stopped.
But rather than gripe about something that cannot be stopped, I think about the consequences, and I tell you what, I think it will end up in greater freedom. Let's take this to an extreme. Suppose they can issue automatic speeding tickets to every car which passes cameras too quickly. They'll be issuing speeding tickets to half the cars out there. This obviously can't be handled the same as now -- they'd be suspending every driver within days or weeks.
They will have to come up with an alternative, which I guess to be raising speed limits to something reasonable such that much less than 1% of licenses are suspended every year, and speeding will turn into minor revenue sources -- you want to get somewhere faster? Pay a buck or two more, or $5 more, and no points, no fines, no problem.
Or consider the privacy problem. I sure don't like knowing I will be tracked everywhere I go. But consider what happens when everyone is tracked by everyone's cameras. It will apply to **everyone**, including the rich and famous, not just ordinary blokes. The billions of publicly available fully archived webcams will quickly outnumber politically controlled government cameras.
Remember, there will be public broadcasts of billions of webcams, nice high resolution ones, with plenty of archival storage. Want to know who met with your local politician just before that vote change to help a huge contractor? Programs will abound which will search archives for specific individuals or cars, or just go to the politician's and contractor's houses, go back thru the archive til you find them, follow them backwards -- when they disappear off one webcam, there will be dozens or hundreds already picking up the trail.
Just as the gun equalized "might makes right", eliminating the advantage of lots of idle time for sword practice which peasants didn't have, this ubiquitous surveillance will equalize anonymity. Ordinary people don't have much of it now; the rich and powerful do. In a decade or two, they won't have it either.
When there are billions of webcams to choose from for your own idle pleasure or to target your computer search programs on, who would you rather see -- your neighbors who you already see all day, or Donald Trump? The rich and powerful have far more to lose than ordinary folk.
We will *ALL* live in a small town where nobody can hide anything. I relish that thought and think it a damned fine tradeoff for loss of privacy.
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:3, Interesting)
My car is the only thing that shields me from the failures of society. This 3mm steel wall between me and the scum is all I can ever hope to get in the now socialist Western Europe.
I have no legally available weapon to defend myself against millions of knife-wielding gangsters in our buses and subways, the "youth", you know who I'm talking about.
The police feeding off my taxes is overwhelmed with hundreds of calls every hour, while and because judges and state attorneys will free two out of three suspects because of social outlook and on parole, even after dozens of misdemeanors.
Welfare allows 80% of the "Youths" to never work one day in their life. We never force anyone to do anything, we pay hard cash and you'd never even have to say "thanks". It's not only the group torching all the cars in our capital cities, the one you know I'm talking about, but also a sheer staggering amount: a third of our workforce, oh and they are sooooo willing to work, just not at McDonalds or the dollar store, that's too low for them, really.
That's why I drive that car to work. It's 5km away, I could basically walk. But then again, I have to wear a clean white collar to work everyday, which means I'd probably get annoyed, spit at or mugged by the feral illiterates who prowl our cities.
Thanks, but I'd rather pay another quarter of my income for having a 3mm steel wall and 100kW acceleration between me and the welfare-diseased scum.
Hopefully this means the E470 loop can be finished (Score:5, Interesting)
Initially the E470 toll road was envisioned as a loop around the entire Denver metro area, allowing easy access for people in the suburbs to the airport, the Denver tech center south of town, and the interstate roads toward the ski resorts. By bypassing all that traffic around downtown, they would ease congestion significantly, especially during the winter months.
Unfortunately the residents of Golden, an upscale suburb slightly off the beaten path west of Denver, didn't like the idea of the plebians being able to access their town without having to jump through hoops to get there. They torpedoed the completion of the loop to keep the rabble out of their isolated, upscale community. The result of this is that any skiers coming from the heavily populated areas north of Denver are routed through the center of the city on their way to the slopes, causing congestion and traffic misery for both the tourists and residents.
Meanwhile, not content to make up for massively cutting their operating budget by no longer having any toll collectors, thus slashing their payroll and ongoing operating costs to a bare minimum, the governing body of E470 implemented a toll raise to pay for the new automated technology that will save them millions yearly.
Now that they've put people out of work, hopefully greed for the lost revenue in skier tolls they're missing out on every year will drive the owners of E470 to use that extra money to lobby various legislative bodies that will mandate the completion of the loop.
The residents of Golden delayed the rollout of HDTV in Denver for years by blocking the construction of upgraded antennae, until finally it required a federal mandate to push things through. Let's hope that the E470 governing body's lust for capital is enough to trump the isolationists in Golden.
Sometimes the only way to beat nakedly greedy, corrupt elitists is to sic other nakedly greedy, corrupt elitists on them.
There really is a solution. Get rid of your cars. (Score:3, Interesting)
hat is the first lesson the homeless learn.
Only some homeless. However some homeless know how useful a car is. I used to know some people who lived in their cars. And having the transportation can make it easier to find and get a job.
Falcon
Re:Yeah, it would be cool in an ideal world... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously! You people down in the states still use toll booths? How deliciously quaint. Here in Ontario we've been using automated systems for a long time on the ETR with no problems well at least none with the actual mechanics of the system. The company that runs it are a bunch of jackasses and the government should be shot for selling it to that company in the first place but there you go.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, it would be cool in an ideal world... (Score:1, Interesting)
Here in NY, we've had EZPass for quite awhile on our toll roads. You can either go through a EZPass booth and just drive through, or stop and pay if you don't have EZPass. It seems odd to me that everyone doesn't have an EZPass by now. You get discounted fees, and it doesn't cost you anything extra. Plus you can use your EZPass all over the east coast. When I drive to Maryland and back, I don't have to stop and pay once, I can just use the EZPass the whole way. So to put it simply, it's only the dumb people who pay at toll booths these days, and they're paying more than those of us who get to drive through quickly.
Simple solution actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
Introduction of "random checks" near the tollbooths that prove to have a significant enough number of "bounced" toll charges.
They have a photo of the car, driver and the license plate that "bounced" - they know who to stop.
So, you either end up in some serious trouble for driving a car with fake license plates OR you don't get caught that time (cause you were not using them at the time) but you NEVER get the bright idea do that again.
Sure, until you get nailed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Because of course as soon as they bill you and find out you don't exist then they have a description of the car.
In fact it would be much better than that for them. First of all the toll system can look you up RIGHT AWAY, and if the camera is smart enough to determine make, model, and color of car, then surely a mismatch comes up or the plate doesn't exist at all, and 5 miles down the road you're pulled over.
And the fine for a fake plate, well it probably isn't pretty. It sure is a lot more serious than a speeding ticket. I'd be quite willing to bet that it costs more than the toll x1000.
Even if they only figure it out a week later they still know what the car looks like.
Now couple this with extra cameras the fact that it is getting pretty easy to track individual vehicles in real time and I don't think too many people would get away with it for long. They only have to EVENTUALLY bust 1% of the offenders to make it not worth doing. Especially if you get a 90 suspension or something.
And why would you have to pay that (Score:3, Interesting)
If tolls pay for the roads. There are an abundance of reasons why it makes much more sense to pay for roads with tolls.
It would end the massive subsidization of the trucking industry, which is WAY less efficient at transporting goods than rail/intermodal transport. If the truckers had to actually PAY the full cost (and pass it on to their customers) that would internalize this cost. The result would be lower prices AND lower taxes for the average person.
Why SHOULD I have to pay (and I do, the gas taxes only pay a fraction of road costs) out of my general tax dollar which is now recaptured by businesses getting subsidized delivery of goods? Especially if I only drive say 3000 miles a year and someone else drives 4x that much? Let them pay for all that extra driving they do.
It would certainly encourage the use of mass transit.
Once vehicles get a lot more efficient, or electric, then how is the gas tax going to work? It won't. OK, we could tack the cost onto the price of a vehicle, but that's bad because now it has to be paid up front, which means you have to borrow the money when you buy the car. Plus again people that drive less are getting ripped off.
Tolls SHOULD be the way roads are paid for. Make the user of the service pay for the service. This is what free market economics is all about.
As for all the objections related to 'well they'll just put the money in a slush fund', that's dumb. Corrupt is corrupt. Why would it matter what the source of the revenue is? That's a problem on the SPENDING side, not the collecting side.
I can see SOME argument when it comes to minor surface roads in that there are externalized benefits as well as costs. Emergency services need to be able to use those roads, etc, but the argument still ultimately stands. If the fire dept needs to get everywhere, then allocate that cost to the fire dept! The externalized benefits are then ultimately shifted back to the general revenue and we end up with a much better allocation of costs.
I see NO ultimate downside, except if you live way out in the middle of nowhere you are going to have a problem, but that's only because right now people out in the middle of nowhere pay nowhere near the cost to society of them living there! Its their choice. If its too expensive to live out there, then you can move into town.
Re:Denver resident here. The OP fails to mention (Score:2, Interesting)
I already pay for roads; it's called paying my taxes.
Actually, you don't come close to paying for the roads with your taxes. Nor does anyone else. Here in Minnesota, state and federal gas taxes only cover about 1/3 of the cost. Why do you think the federal highway trust fund is bankrupt? We're going to have a major collapse of our transportation network. The stimulus bill will only be a very temporary fix unless we raise new revenue.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? -Plate Cloning (Score:2, Interesting)
It has already been done.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/26/2632.asp [thenewspaper.com]
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree with the grandparent but want to pick on your post. The American rail transit system is horrible except in some places such as the Northeast (New York to DC) and Chicago. And its still a joke compared to the rest of the world. Pretty much ever where else, for the average commuter, I would say the transit systems' faults are: time, effort, and flexibility in comparison to a car.
Take Atlanta for example, our county has a separate transit system. But luckily, I would say 50% of the businesses in Atlanta are connected directly to rail and around 20% more via a connecting bus. For me to just get into the Atlanta transit system, I need to walk a mile, and take two buses to link up with one of the rail stations. That takes me 1-2 hours (the buses come every 30 min). Via car, it will take me 1/2 to 1 hour, depending on traffic. This is how most cities with transit systems are. I could move to a better location and have the Atlanta transit system within 15 minutes, but my living expenses will shoot up by 40%. Even with the horrible gas prices, the car was a better deal.
And our national rail system (Amtrak) is a joke. It costs less money and about 10-30% of the time to buy an undiscounted Airline ticket for the same trip. Amtrak has been shown that it isn't economically feasible, yet we keep it around for sentimental reasons.
However, overall, our highway system is the best in the world. If you look at urban planning and population densities (or just look at a telecom's coverage map), you will see that our highway system is equivalent to most countries' rail systems. Where most countries use rail to transport freight, and then local trucking, we use a significant amount of just trucking across the country.
We are far too economically, commercially, and socially invested in our highways to ever make mass public transit an _efficient_ alternative. It would take too many people picking up their homes and moving into smaller plots or too many complex rail networks (see Philly) to feed spread out communities. People will just NOT be willing to do it in large enough numbers for it to be worth it.
My area (Smyrna and Marietta) is a perfect example. We have massive traffic jams that can double if not triple your vehicle commute into Atlanta. However, the area is rather willing to deal with the traffic than connect via a rail to the Atlanta system. Although there is already a freight rail system in place and a perfect abandoned location for a station, the people just don't want it. One, the traffic doesn't effect us as much (just the ppl from further north that drive past us) so why should we foot the bill. And two, all the parties between want a rail station which means too many stops, which means a slow rail commute, which means it isn't worth it. Plus, if we put it up, people will see that the parallel highway is faster anyway with less cars.
There are other reasons, but these two are pretty much it for every city in the US.
Re:Yeah, it would be cool in an ideal world... (Score:3, Interesting)
I pay everything with cash. I don't currently have a checking account or a credit card.
That's really surprising to me -- the only people I know without bank accounts are illegal immigrants! I wouldn't want to have large amounts of cash in my possession, either in my wallet or in my home.
Here in London, you can pay the Congestion Charge -- also done with number plate recognition -- by credit/debit card (either online, by text message, or over the phone) or with cash (at many shops) or by post (only in advance, and by cheque). But toll booths wouldn't be an option anyway!
Re:EZ Pass speeds (Score:4, Interesting)
I was told by a somewhat reliable source who is an anorak about this stuff that they have been tested up to 110mph and still work fine.
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:3, Interesting)
A guy in a business suit or lady dressed for a real job, isn't gonna ride next to Freddy the freeloader..smelling of urine and last nights cheap wine.
I think bad hygiene alone keeps regular people off mass transit in many cases.
Re:Yeah, it would be cool in an ideal world... (Score:2, Interesting)
I find that the cost is one of the things that brings me to like the ETR as much as I do. My place of work is right on an exit from the 407, and the drive requires me to travel by 401 or 407. Since the 407 costs as much as it does, it is always relatively free, so I can always have a peaceful ride, without the headaches of the constant jams of alternate routes.
During rush hour however, even the toll highway gets a fair bit of traffic, so clearly they are priced right around where they want to be, given the demand in the area.
Stop whining (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're in the US, your gas prices are so freakin' low that you SHOULD be charged per km (sorry, per mile).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing [wikipedia.org]
Increase the price of gas, or charge per mile.