Toll road

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from Turnpike)

Image:SR 417 University Toll Plaza.jpg Image:Sayama Loop toll road-2005-6-5.jpg Image:Toll-gates.jpg A toll road, tollway, turnpike, pike or tollpike is a road on which a toll authority collects a fee for use. Similarly there are toll bridges and toll tunnels. Other non-toll roads are financed using other sources of revenue, most typically gasoline tax or general tax funds. Tolls have been placed on roads at various times in history, often to generate funds for repayment of toll revenue bonds used to finance constructions and/or operation.

Early toll roads

Early references include the (mythical) Greek ferryman Charon charging a toll to ferry (dead) people across the river Acheron. Aristotle and Pliny refer to tolls in Arabia and other parts of Asia. In India, before the 4th century BC the Arthasastra notes the use of tolls. Germanic tribes charged tolls to travellers across mountain passes. Tolls were used in the Holy Roman Empire in the 14th century and 15th century.

A good example in the 14th century would be Castle Loevestein in the Netherlands, which was built at a strategic point where 2 rivers met, and charged tolls to boats sailing the river.

National toll-road differences

Asia

People's Republic of China

Image:AirportExpresswayTollStation.jpg Nearly all Chinese expressways and express routes charge tolls, although they are not often networked from one toll expressway to another. However, beginning with the Jingshen Expressway, tolls are gradually being networked. Given the size of the nation, however, the task is rather difficult.

China National Highways, which are not expressways, but "grade-A" routes, also charge tolls. Some provincial, autonomous-regional and municipal routes, as well as some major bridges, will also charge passage fees. In November 2004, legislation in China provided for a minimum length of a stretch of road or expressway in order for tolls to be charged.

Hong Kong

Image:P1010280.JPG In Hong Kong, most tunnels and some bridges that form part of the motorway networks are tolled to cover construction and maintenance costs. Some built recently are managed in the BOT (build, operate, transfer) basis. The companies built the tunnels or bridges are given franchise of a certain length of time (usually 30 years) to operate. Ownership will be transferred to the government when the franchise expires. See also Tunnels and bridges in Hong Kong.

India

The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, spanning a 95 km (49 miles) distance between the outskirts of the twin cities of Mumbai and Pune, is India's first access controlled turnpike. The project was completed under the stewardship of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) [1] in 2002. The new route cuts the time taken to travel between the two cities to approximately 2 hours

Indonesia

Indonesia opened its first toll road in 1978 when the Jagorawi Toll Road linking the capital city of Jakarta to Bogor and Ciawi, about 60 km south, completed. Still limited in existence, it has just completed a 50 km mountainuous toll from Cikampek to the highland city of Bandung in West Java and is named Cipularang Toll Road. This latest toll also connects to the existing Cikampek Toll Road that runs from Jakarta.

Malaysia

Image:Nse-kl-toll.JPG Malaysia has extensive toll roads that forms the majority of country's expressways which in length spans more than 1000 km ranging North to the Thai border, South to the Causeway and Second Link to Singapore, West to Klang and Pulau Indah and East towards Kuantan. Most of the toll roads are in major cities and conurbations such as Klang Valley, Johor Bahru and Penang. All of Malaysian toll roads are managed in the BOT (build, operate, transfer) basis as in Hong Kong (see below). Please see Malaysian expressway system for more information.

Philippines

The Philippines have five toll roads, all on the main Island of Luzon. The longest and most modern is the 84-kilometer-long North Luzon Expressway, connecting Manila with Santa Ines in the North.

The South Luzon Expressway and the Skyway connect Manila with the southern part of Luzon.

The Coastal Road is a short (under 10 kilometers long) urban expressway in the south of the Manila metropolitan area.

The Tipo Expressway is a 6-kilometer-long non-divided toll road runing east from the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. It is operated by the same operator as the North Luzon Expressway.

The Star Expressway runs south from Manila to the City of Lipa.

Only the North Luzon Expressway and the South Luzon Expressway / Skyway have an electronic toll collection system, which is based on the 5.7 GHz standard.

Singapore

Further information : Singapore Area Licensing Scheme, Electronic Road Pricing

In Singapore, toll stations are automated, thus reducing manpower. The automated toll stations, also known to the locals as ERP or Electronic Road Pricing, was introduced to reduce city traffic jams. Although it is advanced, it is still unpopular among Singaporean drivers.

Taiwan

Freeways

Image:Taiwan Freeway Toll Station Notification.PNG

Freeways in Taiwan are not exactly toll roads in the sense that toll gates/stations are not located at the entrance and exits of the freeway. Toll stations/checkpoints are located every thirty to forty kilometers on the No. 1 and No. 3 National Freeways of the Republic of China. There are no freeway exits once a toll station notification sign appears, making it necessary for the driver to be familiar with the locations of the toll stations in advance. (U-turns on freeways are unlawful and dangerous.)

Toll booth operators only collect prepaid tickets on the left lanes of the station; cash and tickets are collected on the right lanes. Some people who know the final exit before a toll station will deliberately shunpike; however, most people find this to be an inconvenience and just pay the toll, unless they know a major traffic problem that will make staying on the freeway much slower.

Separate lanes are for four separate types of vehicles. Small vehicles (Template:Zh-t) use most lanes. Heavy trucks (Template:Zh-t, trucks with over 3500 kg in gross weight), buses (Template:Zh-t, passenger vehicles with 10 or more seats including the drivers), and combination vehicles (Template:Zh-t, vehicles towing trailers with over 750 kg in gross weight) must keep right to use designated toll lanes only or risk an administrative fine of 3000 new Taiwan dollars for toll violation. All toll stations also have weigh stations where truckers must stop when tolls are collected.

Since tolls are mostly manually collected, tolling has been suspended for certain major holidays as announced to reduce congestion at the toll booths. The electronic toll collection has begun testing in 2006.

Other toll roads

Image:TW-Art060.3.gif

Other toll roads in Taiwan are usually newly built bridges and tunnels. Tolls are frequently collected to pay off the construction cost and once paid off, the tolls may be repealed.

Europe

Specialized system provisions

Stickers

Austria (for vehicles to 3.5 tons), the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland and Hungary have toll motorways (some, though, are toll-free). Payment in those countries is done in the form of "vignettes", or stickers being affixed to the car's front window, which are valid for a certain amount of time. The time is always one calendar year in Switzerland; in Austria cheaper vignettes with shorter validity are also available.

Toll collection for trucks

Switzerland introduced a toll-system for trucks over 3.5 tons in January 2001, and
Austria introduced a electronic toll collection system for trucks over 3.5 tons in January 2004, based on DSRC micro wave technology.
Germany followed suit with some delay through technical problems on January 1, 2005. The German Toll Collect system is based on a technology using satellites; truck operators may choose to either install on-board units for automated tracking of movements, or to book their route in advance using the internet or computerized booking terminals. The toll is valid for trucks >12 tons.

Croatia

All Croatian motorways are toll-roads with the exception of the one surroungind Zagreb. They are networked so the driver only pays when leaving the motorway. Tolls are paid in proportion to the length of the used section and according to the corresponding vehicle group. The first motorway (between Zagreb and Karlovac was opened 1972. In 2005 the length of the multi-lane motorways was close to 800 kilometers with over 300 additional kilometers to be built by 2008. Most toll-roads are operated by the state company Hrvatske autoceste d.o.o..

France

In Europe, the most substantial use of toll roads is in France, where most of the autoroutes carry quite heavy tolls: at least some traffic seems to be displaced onto local roads as a result. In a number of countries the companies have often fallen in and out of the public sector, and many have had financial problems.

Italy

In Italy all the autostrade (the Italian for Autobahn, or Highways) are toll roads. They are all networked in the fact that if you enter in Naples and exit in Venice you will pay only at the exit, even though you have changed several streets. They are named AXX, where XX is a number from 1 to 30, e.g. A1 connects Milan to Naples; and they might have nicknames ("Autostrada del Sole" = "Sun Highway" for the A1). The numbers don't follow a methodology. 61% of the Autostrade are handled by the "Autostrade per l'Italia S.p. A" society, and its subsidiaries. The network of highways covers most of Italy: North and Center Italy are well covered, South and Sicily are scarcely covered, Sardinia is not covered.

Other toll roads in Italy are the urban areas of Venice and Florence where tourist buses must pay a fee to enter the city. Autostrade are pretty expensive too. For example the typical Milan-Naples route of around 700 Km costs approximately 40 €.

Norway

Norway has a 60 year long experience in road tolling for financing bridges, tunnels and roads. Until the beginning of the 1980's contributions of tolls to the road building budget stagnated at about 5%, since then it has soared to more than 25% in 2000. Those twenty years were marked by the advance of road tolling in urban areas.

Norwegian authorities closely monitored Singapore's use of tolls as a means to discourage urban traffic and Bergen got its first toll zone outside the ring road in 01.02.1986. Any driver wishing to enter central Bergen by car had to pay the fee. In difference to the project in Singapore, the tolls in Norway are by law not meant as a means for regulating traffic but rather only as one for generating income to be invested in infrastructure. The lack of general protest and high income from such toll zones made them very popular initially and today toll rings circumscribe Oslo, Stavanger, Tønsberg, Namsos and Kristiansand. The toll ring in Trondheim was closed December 30 2005 after 14 years in operation. The success is only partial: the toll rings have become unpopular and regarded as an extra random tax, new infrastructure has not been developed as expected, and confidence in the road authorities has been dented.

There are also several toll roads to finance road infrastructure and highways in other parts of Norway. An example of successful use is the bridge over lake Mjøsa which is now free of charge.

Portugal

In Portugal a certain number of roads are designated Toll-Roads. They charge a fixed value per kilometre distance, with several classes depending on vehicle type and regulated by the government. Several authorised franchises run them, the largest at present being BRISA. For cash-free payments there exists the Via Verde system (Portuguese for Green Way) which is an electronic tag that is fitted to vehicles and automatically debits an associated bank-account with the cost of the journey made.

Well-known roads are the A1, which goes from Lisbon to Oporto and the A2, from Almada to the Algarve, or the A6, from the A2 at Marateca to the Spanish border, close to Badajoz.

United Kingdom

Until the seventeenth century most roads in England, other than surviving Roman roads, were simple tracks through the earth, the term road indicating no more than a right of passage. Responsibility for the upkeep of the roads seems to have rested with landowners, but was probably not easily enforced against them.

Parliament placed the upkeep of bridges to local settlements or the containing county under the 1531 Statute of Bridges and in 1555 the care of roads was similarly devolved to the parishes as statute labour. Every adult inhabitant of the parish was obliged to work four consecutive days a year on the roads, providing their own tools, carts and horses. The work was overseen by an unpaid local appointee, the Surveyor of Highways. It was not until 1654 that road rates were introduced. However, the improvements offered by paid labour were offset by the rise in the use of wheeled vehicles greatly increasing wear to the road surfaces. The government reaction to this was to use legislation to limit the use of wheeled vehicles and also to regulate their construction. A vain hope that wider rims would be less damaging briefly led to carts with sixteen inch wheels. They did not cause ruts but neither did they roll and flatten the road as was hoped.

The first turnpike road, whereby travellers paid tolls to be used for road upkeep, was authorised in 1663 for a section of the Great North Road in Hertfordshire. The term turnpike refers to a gate on which sharp pikes would be fixed as a defence against cavalry. Most English gates were not built to this standard; of the first three gates, two were found to be easily avoided.

The first turnpike trust was established by Parliament through a Turnpike Act in 1706, placing a section of the London-Coventry-Chester road in the hands of a group of trustees. The trustees could erect gates as they saw fit, demand statute labour or a cash equivalent, and appoint surveyors and collectors, in return they repaired the road and put up mileposts. Initially trusts were established for limited periods of around twenty years. The expectation was that the trust would borrow the money to repair the road and repay that debt over time with the road then reverting to the local authorities. In reality the initial debt was rarely paid off and the trusts were renewed as needed. The turnpike trusts were initially set up along the thirteen main roads from London, a process that lasted until 1750. From 1751 until 1772 there was a flurry of interest in turnpike trusts and a further 390 were established. By 1825 over 1,000 trusts controlled 25,000 miles of road in England and Wales.

The quality of early trust roads was very variable - standards for road construction were unknown and while they were better the roads still tended to become easily waterlogged. Road construction improved slowly, initially through the efforts of individual surveyors, such as John Metcalf in Yorkshire in the 1760s. But nineteenth century engineers made great advances, notably Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam. The work of Telford on the Holyhead Road in the 1820s reduced the journey time of the London mail coach from 45 hours to just 27 hours, and the best mail coach speeds rose from 5-6 mph to 9-10 mph. In 1843 the London to Exeter mail coach could complete the 170 miles in 17 hours.

The rise of railway transport largely halted the improving schemes of the turnpike trusts. The London-Birmingham railway almost instantly halved the tolls income of the Holyhead Road. Unable to earn sufficient revenue from tolls alone the trusts took to requiring taxes from the local parishes. The system was never properly reformed but from the 1870s Parliament stopped renewing the acts and roads began to revert to local authorities, the last trust vanishing in 1895.

The Local Government Act, 1888 created county councils and gave them responsibility for maintaining the major roads. The abiding relic of the English toll roads is the number of houses with names like "Turnpike Cottage", the inclusion of "Bar" in place names and occasional roadname: Turnpike Lane in northern London has given its name to an Underground station.

Today, the only tolls on roads in the United Kingdom are mainly tolled bridges and tunnels (e.g. Dartford Crossing, Severn crossing, Mersey Tunnels, Tyne Tunnel), congestion charging schemes, some small, privately-owned toll roads, (e.g. in Dulwich College), and the recently-built and privately-financed M6 Toll, potentially the first of a new generation of toll roads.

North America

Canada

Most tolled roadways in Canada are bridges to the United States, although a few domestic bridges in some provinces have tolls. Toll highways disappeared, for the most part, in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990's, political pressure dropped the new tolls on an upgraded section of the Trans Canada Highway in New Brunswick. Highway 407 in the Greater Toronto Area is a modern toll route. Another toll highway in Canada is the Highway 5/Coquihalla Highway in British Columbia.

Mexico

Mexico has an extensive system of toll roads or Autopistas. Autopistas are built and funded by Federal taxes and are built to nearly identical standards as the US Interstate Highways System. Also, many states in Mexico have their own toll roads such as Puebla, Veracruz and Nuevo Leon.

United States

A toll road in the United States is often called a turnpike. The term turnpike may have originated from the turnstile or gate which blocked passage until the fare was paid at a toll house (or toll booth in current terminology).

History, funding through tolls

Image:Matecumbe Keys toll booth.jpg

In early US history, many individual citizens would gravel nearby stretches of road and collect a fee from people who used that specific stretch. Eventually, companies were formed to build, improve, and maintain a particular section of roadway, and tolls were collected from users to finance the enterprise. The enterprise was usually named to indicate the locale of its roadway, often including the name of one or both of the termini. The word turnpike came into common use in the names of these roadways and companies, and is essentially used interchangeably with toll road in current terminology.

The first major toll road in the United States was the Lancaster Turnpike, built in the 1790s, within Pennsylvania, connecting Philadelphia and Lancaster. In New York State, the Great Western Turnpike was started in Albany in 1799 and eventually extended, by several alternate routes, to the Finger Lakes region.

In the mid to late nineteenth century, private toll road building was particularly active in the West including California and Nevada. In Nevada, over 100 private toll roads were laid out in the decades of the American Civil War, some of them nearly 200 miles long. The owners included stage companies, miners, and ranchers who built the roads, at least in part, to attract business for their primary investments.

By the turn of the twentieth century most toll roads were taken over by state highway departments. In some instances, a quasi-governmental authority was formed, and toll revenue bonds were issued to raise funds for construction and/or operation of the facility.

With the development, mass production, and popular embrace of the automobile, faster and higher capacity roads were needed. In the 1920s limited access highways appeared. Their main characteristics were dual roadways with access points limited to (but not always) grade-separated interchanges. Their dual roadways allowed high volumes of traffic, the need for no or few traffic lights along with relatively gentle grades and curves allowed higher speeds. Bicyclists also campaigned for good roads early on.

The first limited access highways were Parkways, so called because of their often park-like landscaping and, in the metropolitan New York City area, they connected the region's system of parks. When the German Autobahns built in the 1930s introduced higher design standards and speeds, road planners and road-builders in the United States started developing and building toll roads to similar high standards. The Pennsylvania Turnpike, which largely followed the path of a partially-built railroad, was the first of these, opening in 1940 and starting a resurgence of toll collection, this time to fund limited access highways.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, after an interruption by World War II, the US resumed building toll roads, but to even higher standards. One of these roads, the New York State Thruway, had standards that became the prototype for the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Several other major toll-roads and toll-road systems, based on the model of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, were established before the creation of the Interstate Highway System. These were the Illinois State Toll Highway Commission (now the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority), Indiana Toll Road, Massachusetts Turnpike, Ohio Turnpike, and New Jersey Turnpike. In Illinois, three such roads, which had all been constructed simultaneously, were opened in 1958: the present-day Tri-State Tollway, Northwest Tollway and the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway (originally named the East-West Tollway). Kentucky has an extensive system of parkways, built in the 1960s and 1970s, which began as toll roads; only two of the nine roads still collect tolls, as state law requires toll collection to cease once the road's construction bonds are paid off. Oklahoma also has an extensive system of turnpikes, built about the same time as Kentucky's parkways.

Occasionally it is mooted that some of the Interstate highways, for example, those in the sparsely-populated states just east of the Rocky Mountains, should have been turnpikes. The reason is to have those cross-country trucking firms that use them pay for them. But there is no movement to do this.

In 2005, Indiana's Governor Mitch Daniels sought to lease the Indiana Toll Road to a private company. Indiana could stand to earn $3 Billion in exchange for the rights to the highway for 75 years, money that would go toward other transportation projects in the state. This model, if successful could stand to be imitated throughout the country as an efficient way to raise funds without taxing other sources.

Interstate Highway System

By 1956, most limited-access highways in the eastern United States were toll roads. In that year, the federal Interstate Highway program was established, funding non-toll roads with 90% federal dollars and 10% state match, giving little incentive for states to expand their turnpike systems. Funding rules initially restricted collections of tolls on newly funded roadways, bridges, and tunnels. In some situations, expansion or rebuilding of a toll facility using Interstate Highway Program funding resulted in the removal of existing tolls. This occurred in Virginia on Interstate 64 at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel when a second parallel roadway to the regional 1958 bridge-tunnel was completed in 1976. Image:Florida Freeway.jpg

Since the completion of the initial portion of the interstate highway system, regulations were changed, and portions of toll facilities have been added to the system. Some states are again looking at toll financing for new roads and maintenance, to supplement limited federal funding. In some areas, new road projects have been completed with public-private partnerships funded by tolls, such as the Pocahontas Parkway near Richmond, Virginia, which features a costly high level bridge over the shipping channel of the James River and connects Interstate 95 with Interstate 295 (Virginia) to the south of the city.

Toll avoidance: shunpiking

A practice known as shunpiking evolved which entails finding another route for the specific purpose of avoiding payment of tolls.

In some situations where the tolls were increased or felt to be unreasonably high, informal shunpiking by individuals escalated into a form of boycott by regular users, with the goal of applying the financial stress of lost toll revenue to the authority determining the levy.

One such example of shunpiking as a form of boycott occurred at the James River Bridge in eastern Virginia. After years of lower than anticipated revenues on the narrow privately-funded structure built in 1928, the Commonwealth of Virginia finally purchased the facility in 1949. However, rather than announcing a long-expected decrease in tolls, the state officials increased the rates in 1955 without visibly improving the roadway, with the notable exception of building a new toll plaza.

The increased toll rates incensed the public and business users alike. In a well-publicized example of shunpiking, Joseph W. Luter Jr., head of Smithfield Packing Company, the producer of world-famous Smithfield Hams, ordered his truck drivers to take a different route and cross a smaller and cheaper bridge. Despite the boycott by Luter and others, tolls continued for 20 more years. They were finally removed from the old bridge in 1975 when construction began on a toll-free replacement structure.

Shunpiking has increased in Oklahoma since the construction of the center-of-turnpike rest areas. In theory, one could drive, for example, 40 miles on the Turner Turnpike, stop at the rest area, and turn around, avoiding several dollars in tolls. Although tolls are not that unreasonable, one driving Interstate 44 across the entire state can expect to pay $10-$13 in tolls, giving incentive to get around the fees.

Oceania

Australia

In Australia, a small majority of freeways have been tolled due to the expense of the freeway being built. Such roads can be found in the Australian cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Toll collection is by both electronic toll collections and traditional toll booth collection.

The Queensland Motorways network includes the Gateway Bridge, Gateway Extension, Logan Motorway and Port of Brisbane Motorway. The Port Of Brisbane Motorway is free.

In Melbourne, there are two such companies that operate tollways within the Melbourne Metropolitan Area. Transurban operates CityLink -- sections of Monash Freeway, Southern Link, Western Link and the upgraded sections of the Tullamarine Freeway -- and ConnectEast operates the sections of EastLink that are currently being constructed through the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne. All Melbourne tollways are electronically tolled and the E-tags used by these tollways are interoperable with the tags used on tollways elswhere in Australia.

In Sydney, many of the primary arterial roads (known as Metroads) contain at least one tolled section with a mixture of government and private ownership. The State Government owns the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Harbour Tunnel, while the M2 Motorway, M4 Motorway, M5 Motorway, Eastern Distributor and the Westlink M7 are privately operated by a number of companies. In addition to these, the Lane Cove Tunnel between the M2 and the Gore Hill Freeway is currently under construction.

As well as the Metroad tollways, the Cross City Tunnel - an east-west route underneath the Sydney CBD - was opened to traffic in 2005. This road has become somewhat controversial due to the relatively high toll charge and the closure of surrounding roads designed to funnel traffic through the tunnel.

All Sydney tollways accept E-tags; the Westlink M7, Cross City Tunnel and Lane Cove Tunnel (when completed) also support e-passes and are non-cash being solely electronically tolled, while the Eastern Distributor uses these in addition to toll booths. e-passes are based on cameras at tolling gantries recording the number plates of passing vehicles and matching these to the owner's e-pass account, however with the exception of the Cross City Tunnel and the Eastern Distributor the e-pass systems currently in use are not interoperable. The rest of Sydney's tollways use traditional toll booths in addition to E-tags.

South America

Brazil

In Brazil, toll roads are a recent institution, and were adopted mostly in non-federal highways. The state of São Paulo has the highest length of toll roads, which are exploited either by private companies which bought a concession from the state, or by a state owned company (see Highway system of São Paulo). In São Paulo there is also a statewide electronic collection system using a plastic transponder (e-tag) attached to the windscreen, named SemParar'. There is a growing trend towards tolling in all major highways of the country, but some resistance by the population is beginning to be felt, particularly due to some abuses which are being imposed, restricting the constitutional rights of coming and going (because the Brazilian highway system has very few non-tolled vicinal roads in parallel to highways) and making some trips an extremely expensive affair, as compared to average Brazilian earning power (in São Paulo, a 1,000 km round trip may cost upward of 30 dollars in some roads, higher than gas expenses).

Toll collection technology

The term turnpike refers to the pike or long stick that was held across the road, and only raised when the traveler paid the toll.

Travelers have disliked toll roads not only for the cost of the toll, but also for the delays at toll booths.

An adaptation of military "identification friend or foe" or RFID technology, called electronic toll collection, is lessening the delay incurred in toll collection, and raises hope of eliminating it entirely in the future. The electronic system determines whether the cars passing are enrolled in the program, alerts enforcers for those that are not, and debits electronically the accounts of registered cars without their stopping, or even opening a window. Currently, DSRC is used as a wireless protocol. Other systems are based on GPRS/GSM and GPS technology. Such a system (for trucks only) in Germany launched successfully in January 2005 and by the end of its first year of operation will have charged tolls for around 22 billion driven kilometres. One of the advantages of GPS-based systems is their ability to adapt easily and quickly to changes in charge parameters (road classes, vehicle types, emission levels, times slots etc). Another advantage is the systems' ability to support other value-added services on the same technology platform. These services might include fleet and vehicle engine management systems, emergency response services, pay-as-you-drive insurance services and navigation capabilities.

The first major deployment of an RFID electronic toll collection system was on the Dallas North Tollway in 1989 by Amtech. The Amtech RFID technology used on the Dallas North Tollway was originally developed at Sandia Labs for use in tagging and tracking livestock.

Highway 407 in the province of Ontario, Canada has absolutely no toll booths and instead, the rear license plates of all vehicles are photographed when they enter and exit the highway. A bill is mailed monthly for usage of the 407. Lower charges are levied on frequent 407 users who carry electronic transponders in their vehicles. The approach has not been without controversy: In 2002 the 407 ETR settled a class action with a refund to users.

In Illinois, coins and I-Pass are used in every toll plaza instead of toll tickets. On the East Coast, similar systems include E-ZPass, Smart Tag, or SunPass. The systems use a small radio transponder mounted in or on a customer's vehicle to deduct toll fares from a pre-paid account as the vehicle passes through the toll barrier, reducing manpower at toll booths and increasing traffic flow and fuel efficiency by reducing the need for complete stops to pay tolls at these locations. Some jurisdictions will fine a user for speeding if they pass through two tollgates in such time that they must have been going over the legal limit to do so.Template:Fact

By designing a tollgate specifically for electronic collection, it is possible to carry out open-road tolling, where the customer does not need to slow at all when passing through the tollgate.

Another feature of many electronic toll collection systems is interagency interoperability, where the same transponder is accepted at many toll agencies. For instance, the E-ZPass tag is accepted at most toll facilities from Virginia to Maine.

Electronic toll collection (ETC) systems also have drawbacks. A computer glitch can result in delays several miles long. Some state turnpike commissions such as the Ohio Turnpike have debated implementing E-ZPass but have found that such a system would be ineffective because most of the people who use the turnpike are not commuters, are from states that have no ETS on turnpikes, or are from states that don't have a turnpike at all. Also, the toll plazas of some turnpikes are antiquated because they were originally meant for traffic that stops to pay the toll or get a ticket.

The technology does have its limits. For instance, the Highway 407 automatic number plate recognition technology has a reputation for the occasional misread plate, leading to bills being sent to motorists in remote parts of Ontario who have never been near the tollway.

References

David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Rival Road Builders: Private Toll Roads in Nevada, 1852-1880, Nevada Historical Quarterly 41 (Summer 1998), 71-91.

Daniel B. Klein, The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods? The Turnpike Companies of Early America, Economic Inquiry 28 (October 1990), 788-94.

Daniel B. Klein and Chi Yin, Use, Esteem, and Profit in Voluntary Provision: Toll Roads in California, 1850-1902, Economic Inquiry 34 (October 1996), 680-92.

See also

External links

Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth-Century America (EH.Net Economic History encyclopedia)da:Bompenge

de:Maut fr:Péage id:Jalan tol nl:Tolweg ja:料金所 no:Bomvei pt:Pedágio zh:公路收费系统

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Toll_road"

Categories: Road infrastructure | Road transport | Toll roads

Views

Personal tools

Create an account or log in

Search