Private Operators Are Taking Over Roads and Increasing Tolls, Which Are No Different Than Tax Increases on the People

Ohio Turnpike Lease Plans Bring Toll Hike Fears

July 3, 2011

AP - Leasing Ohio's busy toll road that links the East Coast with the Midwest has the potential to bring billions of dollars to the cash-strapped state. It also could bring higher tolls and drive more traffic onto routes that meander through small towns, opponents say.

The governor wants to lease the Ohio Turnpike to a private operator, following the lead of a handful of states and cities that have pocketed cash for their toll roads in recent years.

Governments strapped by the Great Recession also are turning to selling off and leasing office towers, warehouses and prisons.

"We can get a big chunk of money that can be used to improve our infrastructure in the state," Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Friday during a news conference. "Indiana did it. Indiana made a lot of progress."

Neighboring Indiana last week marked the five-year anniversary of its $3.8 billion lease of the Indiana Toll Road to foreign investors. The state has spent much of the money on highway projects and put $500 million into an investment fund for future road construction.

Chicago leased an 8-mile highway for nearly $2 billion five years ago, and an Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Pocahontas Parkway in Virginia. But a plan to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike fell through in recent years, in part because of fierce opposition from state and federal lawmakers.

Ohio's new budget allows the state to lease nearly all of Interstate 80, which carries about 50 million vehicles each year across northern Ohio from Pennsylvania to Indiana. It also gives the state's legislature some control over any potential deals after concerns were raised about whether a new owner would take care of the highway.

Much of the resistance is being led by officials from Ohio counties along the 241-mile turnpike, which is funded through tolls and the sale of gas and food at rest stops.

"It's a terribly unfair deal for northern Ohioans who have largely paid for the turnpike over the years," said Tim Brown, a commissioner in Wood County, just south of Toledo. "It's no different than a tax increase for us."

Among the main concerns is that tolls are almost certain to go up if a private operator takes over.

Tolls have nearly doubled since investors took over the Indiana Toll Road. A 10 percent increase took effect on Friday, bringing the price to cross the northern half of the state to $9 for most cars.

County officials in Ohio want to make sure there would be limits on future toll increases if the state's toll road is leased. It's now $15 for cars making a full trip. The turnpike collected a record $236 million from motorists last year. By comparison, Pennsylvania charges $32 to travel all 357 miles on its turnpike.

Kasich, a Republican, views the Ohio Turnpike as an asset that has potential to bring more revenue at a time when the state just completed a series of spending cuts to fill an estimated $6 billion budget hole.

He thinks the state could get at least $2.5 billion in leasing it and has said the money would pay for work on roads, bridges and harbors without raising taxes.

No deals are in the works yet. Kasich officials have said they envision a 30-year lease with an initial payment and a piece of annual toll revenues.

Still, there are many more details to work out.

A five-county planning body in northeast Ohio wants most of the money to go toward projects in northern Ohio, where the turnpike money is generated. It also wants to make sure there are guarantees that a private operator will keep up with highway maintenance.

The concern is that if the road becomes too costly or goes downhill, businesses that rely on the route might relocate or it will be tougher to attract new companies.

"There's a cost to the communities that are along the turnpike," said Stephen Hambley, a Medina County commissioner who heads the planning body in northeast Ohio. "We've been paying for it since the '50s. We feel we're a majority stockholder."

That's why state Sen. Mark Wagner, a Republican from Toledo, inserted a provision to Ohio's state budget giving lawmakers oversight of any lease deals.

"We owe it to northern Ohio to do it in a responsible way," he said.

Another worry is that truck traffic will move to secondary roads and clog up the small towns along the way. That's what happened when an 82 percent rate increase took full effect in 1999. The state responded by lowering tolls and increasing speeds for truckers.

More toll hikes if the turnpike is leased will likely push a lot more tractor-trailers onto other roads, said Joe Jones, a long-haul truck driver from Charlotte, N.C. He went out of his way to avoid the turnpike's toll booths while hauling machinery from upstate New York to Chicago on Friday.

"It puts another 60 miles on the trip, but I hate paying tolls," he said while refueling at a truck stop just outside Toledo.

Toll Road RFID Tags: A Threat to Privacy, Anonymity and Individual Liberty

RFID1984.com - Many people consider RFID technology to be a substantial threat to privacy and liberty, especially if it appears that remotely-readable RF tags will be incorporated into a National ID Card, passport or some other form of mandatory identification — an ID card that you will be required to present when opening a bank account, entering a federal building, or buying an airplane ticket.

I'm a little surprised that the people who are so vocal about domestic surveillance haven't said much about this issue.

There are thousands of Texas motorists who have already unwittingly opened the door to government surveillance by participating in TollTag, TxTag, or EZ Pass, programs that allow the use of toll roads and airport parking garages without having to stop and deposit coins at a toll booth. Each participating motorist attaches an RFID tag to his or her car's windshield, and a device at the toll booth detects the card as the motorist zooms unimpeded through the toll plaza.

In other areas of the country, similar programs have names like SunPass, Cruise Card, EXpressToll, Fast Lane, Fastrak, K-Tag, MnPass, PalmettoPass, Pikepass, Smart Tag, I-Pass — and the best name for such a device — eGo.

A serious problem, from the standpoint of privacy protection, is that not all of the RFID tag readers are on toll roads. In Dallas, TollTags can be used to pay for parking at Dallas Love Field and DFW International Airport.* In Houston, plans are under development to allow the use of EZ TAGs at both Hobby and Bush Intercontinental airports.*

The Dallas North Tollway was the first toll road in the world to use electronic toll collection when the technology became available in 1989.* A newer variation called TxTag allows access to toll roads throughout Texas.*

So the major airports have RFID tag readers, along with the tollways, as a matter of convenience. But there is no reason that TollTag readers could not be placed at other points all over the state. This would make it easier to locate a stolen car, for example, if it had an RFID tag.

More recently, a more mysterious development has taken shape: these square white modules have appeared on TXDOT poles along the freeways in the Dallas area. They are usually mounted on the same poles as the traffic surveillance cameras, but in some locations they stand alone.

This mysterious roadside antenna is on Spur 408 in southwest Dallas. The writer knows an antenna when he sees one, and the peculiar thing about this one is that it is tilted downward, about 20°, toward the traffic.

This specimen is located at 32°41'52.0" N., 96°56'10.1" W. An inquiry to the Texas Department of Transportation produced this reply:

The units are Smart Sensors manufactured by Wavetronix. The Smart Sensor is a digital wave radar used for vehicle detection. The Smart Sensor measures vehicle volume, occupancy, speed and classification. The information gathered is NOT used for law enforcement purposes. We use the information to generate the speed map shown on our web site and to generate the travel times displayed on the dynamic message signs on the freeways.

That's interesting. The system is sensitive enough to measure occupancy of each passing vehicle? Even more interesting is the claim that the information is not used for law enforcement purposes. Why not? If their system shows a steady stream of people driving at 90 mph on the freeway, or driving on the shoulders at 60 mph, isn't TXDOT obligated to notify the police?

Updated 9/13/2008:
Today I got an informative email from a reader who clarified the use of the word "occupancy" in TXDOT's explanation above. The term refers to the percentage of time that each of the lanes on the highway is occupied -- the traffic density, in other words, not the number of people in each passing car. Obviously I had overestimated the power of this system.

SmartSensor is a 10.525 GHz Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar.* Information about vehicle movements is collected and stored. To some extent, it is necessary to retain this information in the event of a billing dispute. But there's no way to know whether the data is retained, archived, or sold to the highest bidder, or whether the information is shared with other government agencies in real time.

If the SmartSensor devices are accompanied by TollTag readers, and (someday soon) they could easily be, the technology is in place to track the movements (and speed) of people all over town, not just on the toll roads. This could be a good thing — for example, if the police are looking for a stolen car — or it could be very bad, depending on Big Brother's use of the information.

Yes, but what if you don't have a TollTag on your car? Can you travel anonymously and blend in with the crowd, without being electronically followed? No, because the state is using license plate readers as well.

Highway 121's new lanes to open in July, sans toll collection. Once collections begin, [Texas State Highway] 121 will be the first toll road in the nation without tollbooths. Motorists will be able to use their North Texas Tollway Authority TollTag in addition to the transportation agency's TxTag stickers and the Harris County Toll Road Authority's EZ TAG. People who don't have toll tags, though, won't have to stop at a booth. Instead, video cameras will capture their license plate number and send them a bill, though that will cost about 33 percent more than toll tag users will have to pay.

The Editor says...
I went up the Dallas North Tollway several months ago and never saw a toll booth, so I didn't pay the toll. Nor did I ever get a bill in the mail. I hope there's not a warrant out for my arrest!

Texas Considers Putting RFID Tags in All Cars. New inspection stickers will "contain a tamper-resistant transponder, and at a minimum, be capable of storing: (1) the transponder's unique identification number; and (2) the make, model, and vehicle identification number of the vehicle to which the certificate is affixed."

The Editor states the obvious:
This would render Toll Tags obsolete. It would also make it fairly simple to locate a stolen car, and might be an easy way to enforce the speed limits on the open highway. For example, if your car is detected in Dallas at noon and in Houston at 2:30 p.m., you were obviously speeding on I-45.

Electronic Vehicle Registration Picks Up Speed. In South Africa, at least 500,000 RFID tags are now being affixed to metal license plates to automatically identify vehicles and verify they are properly registered. Within the next two years, 10 million cars in that country are expected to sport electronic license plates. In Bermuda, meanwhile, more than half of the island nation's cars and trucks currently have RFID-enabled registration stickers attached to their windshields, and all of its trucks and cars — nearly 25,000 — are expected to have them by June of this year. Other countries — including Brazil, China, Dubai, India and Mexico — have either already begun implementing or are currently eyeing RFID-enabled vehicle identification and registration systems.

Georgia 400 To Upgrade Cruise Card eGo Tags. Georgia's State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA), which operates the GA 400 toll road in Atlanta, will be the first toll facility within the continental United States to upgrade their radio frequency identification (RFID) toll collection technology to TransCore's paper-thin eGo® tags, a lower-cost, battery-less windshield sticker tag. Almost a million eGo tags are already deployed in transportation applications, including toll roads in Puerto Rico and Brazil.

TxDOT selects TransCore RFID for tracking and tolling throughout Texas. The Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) selects TransCore's eGo® Plus radio frequency identification technology for use in the area's Central Texas Turnpike Program, a $2 billion transportation initiative. The multimillion-dollar contract allows for the initial release of 500,000 eGo Plus tags, branded locally as TxTag, with a total of 2 million tags over two years. The Central Texas Turnpike Program was designed to increase mobility by adding capacity and reducing congestion in the region.

Trusted traveler toll road system means the government will decide if and where you travel.

NAFTA Superhighway RFID Card For US Citizens. US citizens will be forced to adopt a de facto national identification card and have their freedom of mobility defined by the government under proposals set to derive from NAFTA superhighway toll road systems and the implementation of the American Union. Existing toll road systems operational at US borders such as SENTRI/NEXUS and the FAST program mandate that passing vehicles are enrolled in RFID passive tracking and identification programs linked to central databases.

Did someone mention the NAFTA Superhighway?

Pike needs to play fare: Tolls for all or no one. So now the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is thinking about setting up something called "open-road tolling," which means that instead of robbing you at tollbooths, they would record every driver's license-plate number and then rob them with monthly bills. This raises a couple of interesting questions.

Highway Tolls Key to New Jersey Debt, Spending Reform Plan. In his January State of the State address, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) unveiled a long-awaited plan to capture the value of the state's toll roads. The state would receive approximately $38 billion in cash financed by the sale of bonds backed by toll increases. According to the plan, the cash would be used to significantly pay down New Jersey's $32 billion bonded indebtedness and finance transportation projects.

RFID: A Brief Technology Analysis. Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems have been deployed in limited numbers for years. Two of the most predominant have been in the form of toll road collection transponders and security badges. Toll road authorities around the country have equipped drivers with a transponder that is connected to their credit card. This allows them to pay their tolls at 40 miles-per-hour rather than stopping to throw quarters into a basket and slow the flow of traffic.

Skymeter: Skymeter's satellite data aggregation and price matching takes all of the pain out of getting a GPS billing feed [which] can be used for Road Use Charging, Pay as you go Insurance, Parking, and any application requiring payment for vehicle use.

National RFid Center General Newsletter 09/02/2006: The roadway, known as the "Golden Corridor" is the first in the country to install all-video toll collection. Using license plate information photographed by cameras, money will be deducted from customer accounts. Those without toll accounts will have bills sent to their address, based on information from their license plates.

Video eye to scan for Newton parking lapses. Automatic license plate recognition — a kind of RoboCop of the parking world that uses a panoramic video camera, laptop computer, and sophisticated software — detects cars that have been parked too long and sounds an alert to write a ticket. The city bought three systems for $50,000 and plans to install them in parking enforcement vehicles this month.

Police partner with license plate readers. A growing number of police departments are turning to mobile camera systems to fight motor vehicle theft and identify unregistered cars. The cameras read license plates of parked and moving cars — hundreds per minute — and check them against vehicle databases, said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which purchased several systems for its police vehicles last fall.

This license plate-scanning technology has been around for a few years already, and is in use on side streets as well as freeways. The following commentary was written in 2004:

License Plate "Guns" and Privacy: New Haven police have a new law enforcement tool: a license-plate scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars and links with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner. Right now the police check if there are any taxes owed on the car, if the car or license plate is stolen, and if the car is unregistered or uninsured. A car that comes up positive is towed.

Even the most gung-ho devotee of big government would have to be a little concerned about the potential for totalitarianism at this point, even if privacy is not guaranteed. Wholesale monitoring of motorists on the streets and freeways is legal. The U.S. Supreme Court has said in two cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they're driving on a public street.*

"Our commuting to and from where we live and work is not done clandestinely". [Webb v. City of Shreveport, 371 So. 2d 316, 319 (La. Ct. App. 1979).]*

It is interesting that, at least for now, TollTag users can (and do) drive at speeds considerably in excess of the posted speed limit, and even though the TollTag system recognizes those drivers as they enter and exit the highway (and many points along the way), the system is not used to generate speeding tickets. This, I suspect, is to avoid making the TollTag into an unpopular snitch, and to avoid revealing that capability before some appointed hour yet to come -- perhaps after TollTags are mandatory.

Information about vehicle movements is collected and stored, at least for billing purposes. It is necessary to retain this information for some number of months, to resolve potential billing disputes. But there's no way to know whether the data is retained, archived, or sold to the highest bidder, or whether the information is shared with other government agencies in real time.

Incidentally, TollTags are vehicle-specific -- they can't be shared, even between two cars owned by the same person.* There are now over 1,000,000 of these electronic transponders in operation in the North Texas area.*

The use of the TollTag may seem to be sheer luxury, but there are places around Dallas where a vehicle without such a tag must stop and pay a toll two or three times. This results in a little more risk, more gas consumption, and more wear and tear on the brakes at every stop. TollTag users are rewarded with a discounted toll rate as well. If I needed to travel on the North Dallas Tollway every day, I would probably get a TollTag for my car. But I think I would find a way to wrap the TollTag in aluminum foil when I wasn't on the tollway. That might not keep Big Brother from following me around, but there's no reason to make that kind of surveillance any easier.

GMAC Insurance Low-Mileage Discount; Pay by the Mile for Your Insurance

GMAC - Pay for what you use and nothing more.

Would you buy a whole pizza if you only wanted a slice?

Common sense says to only use what you need -- and only pay for what you use. That's the thinking behind the GMAC Insurance Low-Mileage Discount, where those who drive less, save more on their auto insurance. Whatever the reason for hitting the road less often, GMAC Insurance can reward you for something you're already doing.

The less you drive, the more you save -- up to 54%* a year on your auto insurance premiums.