E-ZPass Electronic Toll Interoperability is Now Here
As I’ve written about several times before, there was a 2012 federal mandate to have electronic toll collection be interoperable nationwide by 2016. In practical terms this would mean you’d be able to use your same toll transponder to pay tolls nationwide. That deadline came and went without the country achieving full interoperability. Nevertheless, slow but steady progress has been made.
There are two facets to interoperability: the systems have to be able to read tags from other systems, and additionally each agency has to sign agreements and have their back-office systems linked up. For example, Minnesota used a different system than California, Illinois or New York, so interoperability was not possible. On the other hand, Minnesota for several years has used the same system as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Florida, Puerto Rico and Atlantic Canada, but has never bothered to sign an agreement with any of them.
With respect to electronic compatibility, things have settled down so in North America there’s basically one older electronic system and two newer passive ones. The E-ZPass group, covering much of the Midwest and East of the country uses a system with active battery-operated, electronic transponders. Meanwhile states that are isolated from E-ZPass or implemented tolling afterward use one of two more modern, cheaper systems that use passive, battery-less RFID transponders, basically just a sticker with one integrated circuit and an antenna.
Minnesota has had multiple channel readers on the roadway with the theoretical capability to read E-ZPass transponders for a couple of years now, ever since the switch to the sticker tags from the old active Telematics transponders. But E-ZPass has shown no inclination to require or even encourage it’s three dozen agencies to install multi-channel readers to accept sticker tags. So, states like us that want to join E-ZPass need to revert to issuing expensive, battery-operated electronic transponders. The sticker tags still work and stay in circulation, but all new tags will be E-ZPass.
Here’s a progression of maps showing how the situation has evolved since I first started covering it. Georgia is planning to join E-ZPass soon, so the remaining yellow will turn purple and we’ll be left with two major interoperable blocks in purple and blue, and the isolated systems in brown (graphics by author).
By 2020, except for the Laredo international toll bridges, all the Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas agencies had linked up. The situation in Orlando was complicated, the Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX), Florida Department of Transportation) (FDOT), and Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise (FTE) all operate toll roads there, with a road often changing ownership at a random exit. CFX (branded E-Pass) accepted E-ZPass while FDOT and FTE (branded Sunpass) did not. You couldn’t drive from the airport to Disney or the beach with E-ZPass.
With both Minnesota and the remainder of Florida having joined E-ZPass, here’s the situation as it is currently. As a side note MnDOT has decided to retire the MnPass brand in favor of the generic E-ZPass, while Florida has kept their E-Pass and SunPass branding.
Here is the much simplified map to be effective soon; Georgia has announced it intent to join E-ZPass. Of note South Carolina and Toronto use E-ZPass compatible equipment and could join just by signing an agreement.
The Connected Corridor
In fall 2020, a demonstration project for the next evolution of traffic signal controllers was completed. Traffic signal controllers have evolved over the years from simple electro-mechanical timers, to microprocessor controlled electronic devices, and now the newest ones are capable of running custom software and being linked to central systems through fiber optics. The newest evolution is Adapted Traffic Signal Control (ATSC) where traffic signals communicate with each other and additional sensors to provide some artificial intelligence to the network. For example, a traffic signal might tell another one down the road that an unusually heavy volume of traffic is heading its way so it should plan on lengthening the next phase.
The next step beyond that is traffic signals that actually communicate with vehicles. That’s what the Highway 55 “Connected Corridor” was about – a demonstration project to test out the technology and get an idea what challenges might be faced with a widespread implementation.
The Connected Corridor project was a three-year project to help the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) advance the future of transportation. The project included the planning, design, deployment, and operation of connected vehicle technologies – including software systems and infrastructure to understand how to plan and prepare for emerging transportation technologies. This project included vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology, which helps vehicles “talk” to infrastructure to improve safety and efficiency of roadway users.
MnDOT Connected Corridor Summary Report, 2020
As part of an ultimate setup, in addition to sensing how many cars and where they are, things like speed and turn signal use can be communicated to the signal from cars and logged in order to help traffic engineers. In turn the signal could communicate to the car how much longer the red light will last (if the signal knows), which the car could then display to the driver or maybe even shut off the engine if the light will be red for an extended time. This demonstration was much more modest though, due to budget limitations and lack of “connected” vehicles. The only functional implementation was signal priority for snow plows at select intersections.
Full Connected Corridors or even widespread implementation of ATSC are probably some years away, but the groundwork is being laid as most new controllers installed are ATSC capable. In my home city of Bloomington, most city-owned signals have been upgraded and linked to each other and the city public works building via fiber. A county project to string fiber to all the signals along Old Shakopee Road is also underway.
Highway 74 Reverts to Gravel
On four miles of Highway 74, from Elba to County Road 30, an unusual “deconstruction project” took place. Crews came out, removed the badly deteriorated pavement and then left gravel behind permanently. Unpaving lightly travelled roads has been a thing both in Minnesota and across the country: the 40-year lifecycle cost for a paved road is roughly three times that of a gravel road. But this is the first it has been applied to a Minnesota trunk highway. The road is extremely lightly travelled; annual average daily traffic (AADT) is 400, and there is no money for reconstruction. This joins a seven-mile-long gravel section from County Road 20 to near US 61 at Weaver.
Highway 74 is the last state trunk highway to include a gravel section, due to very low traffic volume (the existing gravel sections are AADT 75) and the difficulty maintaining pavement deep in a ravine. Most of Minnesota’s trunk highways were paved by the 1950s, but a few sections of gravel remained in the northeast and southeast until the 2000s, the penultimate being a section of MN 65 through the Bois Forte Indian Reservation.
