Millions of drivers crossing the new Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington State will leave a record that could be available for nearly a decade, reports the Tacoma News Tribune. A series of cameras will snap 24 photos of the vehicle, detailing the date and time of each trip when a driver uses the Good to Go automatic toll transponder system. The New Narrows Bridge opens July 15, 2007.
The images will be deleted as soon as the system determines the driver has money to cover the toll charge. But the Washington Department of Transportation will store information on each individual passing for 8 1/2 years, said Janet Matkin, spokeswoman for the program.
The data could be used in criminal cases and civil lawsuits.
“We’re dealing in completely new territory,” said William Covington, an assistant professor who teaches a class on technology law and public policy at the University of Washington School of Law. “There are a huge number of unknowns.”
Detectives could use the toll information to track suspected criminals, he said, and there are many other possibilities: Employers could use information against an employee in a lawsuit, or a feuding husband and wife could use the data as a weapon against each other during a divorce.
A similar toll transponder program in the San Francisco area might indicate how local information could be used. The FasTrak program, which allows drivers to cross eight bridges in the Bay Area, has restrictions like the Narrows bridge toll operation: Information can be released only to police and by court order.
That’s happened 17 times in the past two years, said Rod McMillan, director of bridge operations for FasTrak. Law enforcement investigations made up the majority of FasTrak’s 17 information requests, he said.
Information was granted several times in civil disputes, including divorce cases, according to a story published this month in the Contra Costa Times newspaper. Some 620,000 people now hold FasTrak accounts, up roughly 65 percent from a year ago, officials said.
“It’s another tool, if the need arises, which would be very rarely,” said Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer.
The Transportation Department has set up a system for drivers who don’t want any personal information associated with a Good to Go transponder, said Matkin, the program’s spokeswoman.
Those drivers’ vehicles still will be photographed at the toll, but their transponder would be untraceable because it wouldn’t linked to a name, license plate number or financial information, she said.
A driver can get an “unregistered” pass by paying with cash at the Good to Go offices in Tacoma and Gig Harbor instead of a credit card or bank account number, she said.
So far, only a handful of drivers have opted for an unregistered transponder.
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is the replacement for the original one which famously collapsed on film in 1940 (movie on Wikipedia).
Major construction work on the new bridge included installing caissons for a pair of 165-meter-tall towers, building the towers, spinning cables, and assembling the deck. During the final phase, 46 deck sections—each weighing some 450 tons—were lifted and attached to suspension cables.
About $800 million of tax-exempt bond financing was required to support the Tacoma Narrows Bridge project. The new bridge will carry eastbound traffic, while the existing parallel bridge goes westbound.
Oregon’s Green Light Program uses weigh-in-motion scales and transponder readers to screen trucks as they approach a weigh station. It increases a station’s capacity without physically expanding the facility.
Affiliated Computer Services manages the administration of E-ZPass for several states and also manages the Red Light cameras that have proven so profitable for local governments (at the cost of increased rear-end accidents). ACS, a FORTUNE 500 company of 58,000 people, is based in Dallas, with operations in 100 countries.
The Mark IV from IVHS is the leading electronic toll collection equipment manufacturer in North America. Their E-ZPass is used on toll roads in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Illinois. In states that belong to the E-ZPass, fleets can use the Fusion transponder and a program called PrePass Plus consolidate billing for tolls and weigh stations. The NY thruway is testing a solar-powered mobile RFID interrogator that reads EZPass tags attached to passing cars.
Transport for London (TfL) plans to spend up to £30m examining new technologies like RFID and GPS to improve road services and cut congestion. Over the next four years TfL will examine mobile technologies such as 3G, WiFi and WiMax, vehicle and pedestrian tracking systems, and number plate recognition systems.
Booze|Allen|Hamilton thinks cell phones with Near Field Communication are the ticket for transit. NFC is the next generation of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology that enables short-range communications between a cell phone and a point of purchase device.
In this approach, “passive” smartcards would be replaced by “active” NFC-enabled mobile phones, eliminating the need to issue smart cards. The NFC chip would be attached to a mobile phone or imbedded in a phone’s SIM card. Of course, BAH thought Trailblazer was a good idea, too.
The Vehicle Traffic Information Coalition (VTIC) is comprised of auto manufacturers and technology companies leading in the real-time traffic industry.
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