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A CALIFORNIA, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia may be quite different in many ways when It comes to the presidential primaries, but they do have one thing in common: all are grappling with how to collect tolls from the drivers who use their highways. Electronic toll collection is increasingly the obvious answer. Pennsylvania, which is trying to turn Interstate 80 into a toll road, is considering going completely electronic and not including cash lanes.
B By charging tolls on an Interstate that had always been free, Pennsylvania hopes to generate the money needed to maintain this vital east-west artery, a major thoroughfare for trucks. Other states are also looking for ways to raise the money needed for highway repair, upkeep, and expansion. Because resistance to raising taxes on gasoline and diesel remains strong, lawmakers are instead turning to tolls or, in governmental parlance, 'user fees'.
C While Interstate 80 might appear to be a good place to go entirely electronic, the state may be forced to install some cash lanes because many drivers- including some in rental cars and those from states without toll roads- still pay with cash. Cash transactions are costly, though, because highway agencies must pay toll-takers, maintain plazas, and safely transfer the cash to banks. And for drivers already faced by a multitude of distractions, fumbling through pockets for nickels, dimes and quarters to pitch at toll collectors is not only frustrating, it can be dangerous.
D Like fast-food restaurants, department stores, and other businesses that handle cash, tolling agencies are introducing a variety of technologies to streamline the process and increase profits. The most common substitute for human toll collecting uses a combination of radio-frequency identification transponders, high-speed cameras and networked computers that read tags in windshields and instantaneously charge the driver's account, usually billed to their credit cards. Toll plazas are being redesigned so vehicles do not need to slow down.
E E-Z Pass, one of a growing array of technologies that are changing the way agencies collect tolls, is the ubiquitous version, available to drivers in a dozen states from Maine to Virginia. In just New York State, nearly 10 million tags are in use, three times the number in 1999.
F The spread of electronic tolling is having a subtle and unexpected impact on motoring. Drivers need not weave through toll plazas in search of a lane that accepts cash, a particularly difficult task for those on motorcycles. Travel across many states no longer requires a hoard of change for tolls. And because they can check their toll payments online, businessmen do not need to save fistfuls of receipts for their expense reports.
G Increasingly, electronic tags will be embedded into windshields, license plates, and other places so drivers will no longer have to send off for a portable tag from a tolling agency. And because they are part of the car, they will be harder to steal.
H Electronic tolling is changing the way drivers view tolls too. A study by an economist at MIT, Amy Finkelstein, found that drivers who pay their tolls electronically are less aware of the rates they pay. She also found that rates at the tollbooths included in the study were up to 40 per cent higher on roads that accepted electronic tolls compared with those that did not. Drivers rarely like tolls, but they are willing to pay them - even if they are unaware of how much they are paying - if they are getting something in return, like less crowded lanes or a shorter wait at a the booth.
I The more costly alternative would be to build at least one lane for a manned booth with offices nearby to store the cash. While fewer than half of Pennsylvania's drivers have an E-Z Pass, the lanes would be designed with an eye toward removing them as the percentage rises. 'We're treating these cash lanes as temporary,' said Barry J. Schoch, vice president at McCormick Taylor, the engineering firm hired by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to prepare a list of possible sites, 'In 50 years, there will be transponders built into the car, so if we build tollbooths, we will be able to convert them to some other use like rest or maintenance areas'.
J Some of the oldest and largest tolling agencies, like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are studying how to phase out their cash lanes too. Because more than 71 percent of transactions at the Port Authority's tunnels and bridges include an E-Z Pass - up from 52 per cent in 2000 - Anthony E. Shorris, the agency's executive director, expects cash booths to disappear from those crossings over the next five years. The future, in fact, may be on display in places like Stockholm, where drivers do not need tags at all. There, cameras take pictures of every license plate, video recognition software reads the numbers and the owner is charged. While E-Z Pass and other radio-tag systems are likely to remain because of their widespread use, agencies introducing tolls for the first time are looking more at these video-only systems, according to Naveen Lamba, a specialist in traffic management systems at IBM, which provides much of the technology for Stockholm's system. While there are concerns about the reliability of these systems and the privacy of the data they collect, Mr. Lamba said that drivers are increasingly comfortable with electronic tolling.
Adapted From: Ready to Pass IELTS
