Infra Insight Blog

On October 24, 2011, the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI), an organization of more than 40 toll road operators founded in 2007 for the purpose of promoting and implementing interstate interoperability, will commence pilot operations for four license plate interoperability hubs.  Pursuant to the Interoperability Network Pilot Program (INPP), separate hubs established by four vendors (ACS [a subsidiary of Xerox ], Federal Signal, Cofiroute USA, and Secure Interagency Flow [a CS/Egis joint venture]) will receive license plate data from six tolling agencies (E470 in Colorado, Florida Turnpike Enterprise, Maryland, North Texas Tollway Authority, Oklahoma Turnpike, and Washington State DOT) on a daily basis.  Hub operators are in turn expected to provide a response with matches of account information on a daily basis.

Pilot operations will test the vendors’ respective abilities to interchange data between the six independent toll operators.  The data would facilitate a toll operators’ use of license plate images generated by its gantry-mounted cameras to identify out-of-area motorists that do not have a transponder account with the toll operator’s facility.

According to ATI, the INPP, expected to continue for approximately three months, will permit selection of one or more operators for a clearinghouse or hub that will provide customers with the ability to utilize a single account to pay for their services.  While the hub(s)’ initial effort will be exchange of license plate image data, the focus may be expanded to cover out-of-area transponder toll clearance.  If successful, the project ultimately will increase the ability of toll agencies to use license plate image data to collect tolls with certainty from out-of-area drivers.