A toll road network in Orange County, Calif., now allows drivers who receive a violation — generally, those drivers who don’t have a valid FasTrak account — to easily pay their toll by scanning a QR code on the bill they receive in the mail.
“Agencies have done a really good job at updating all of their technology, going cashless. But the payment [process] is still really hard, and sort of legacy behind,” said Anne Hay, chief marketing officer for PayNearMe, the technology company operating the back-end payment system used by Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) a transportation network organization made up of the Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency and the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, both in southern California.
Orange County drivers using the 51-mile TCA network, known as The Toll Roads, are no longer tasked with having to manually pull up the payment website and enter their payment information. One easy QR code scan takes them to the payment site and seamlessly takes care of the process. “It’s not that drivers are out there going, ‘I’m not going to pay this $6, $8,’” Hay said.
But the process of physically calling up a website, typing in the invoice number, and then filling in the numerous bits of information regarding one’s credit card or other data is often cumbersome enough to increase the rate of non-payment, she said.
PayNearMe officials contend tolling agencies are losing more than $2.2 billion annually in collected toll revenue. The company also helps drivers with no bank account by enabling cash payments for tolls at retail locations such as 7-Eleven, CVS Pharmacy, Family Dollar, Walgreens and Walmart. More than 62,000 retailers participate, Michelle Kennedy, TCA manager of media relations, said via email.
Companies like Quarterhill, which provides tolling tech for the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority and the Harris County Toll Road Authority among others, envision “a future where tolling is integrated into a broader mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) ecosystem,” Rick Strobridge, Quarterhill chief revenue officer, said via email, describing the technology as a “flexible architecture” enabling multiple forms of transportation payments from tolling to parking, transit and ride-hailing. “This unified experience enhances convenience and accessibility.”
The idea of paying per trip to use roadways is becoming a more frequent conversation topic among regional and state transportation planners as they struggle to find new sources of revenue to make up for declining gas taxes. Unlike rising highway construction costs, the federal gas tax rate has not been increased since 1993. Meanwhile, fuel economy metrics have improved and a whole new sector that never pays the gas tax — electric vehicles — has emerged.
“This bipartisan reluctance to raise the fuel tax has resulted in a pretty poor road network, and one that needs to be rebuilt,” said Michael F. Gorman, Niehaus chair in business analytics and operations management at the University of Dayton, said June 17 during a panel organized by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
“As electric vehicle adoption grows and fuel tax revenues decline, our technology supports the transition to tolling as a primary funding mechanism,” Strobridge said.
The challenges of maintaining a costly and aging infrastructure are part of the reason Tennessee is exploring more of what it calls “choice lanes,” where users pay a fee to use the premium lane on Interstates 24 and 65 in some of the state’s most congested areas. The fee, which has not yet been set, varies by the time of day. The state is careful to not call these toll roads, since they are placed alongside general-use lanes, much like an expressway.
“Looking at those solutions that leverage private-sector participation in the process is critical to being able to sustain that revenue stream that we’re trying to do,” Butch Eley, then deputy governor and commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, said during a panel at the CoMotion Miami conference in April. (Eley is stepping away from both roles during the year’s third quarter.)
Congestion pricing programs, which charge drivers to enter a high traffic congestion zone, have grabbed attention, none more so than the newly implemented Central Business District Tolling Program in New York City, which charges motorists $9 to enter the zone below 60th Street. Traffic delays are now down 25 percent in Manhattan, and down 9 percent in surrounding areas, according to a June report by the Regional Plan Association, an independent nonprofit advocating for smarter planning.
“Governments can use the revenue from congestion pricing to invest in infrastructure improvements, transit expansion, and other public services, directly benefiting society while maintaining a sustainable funding model,” Strobridge said.
Road-usage fees have also emerged as another way to generate revenue, based on billing drivers for operating their vehicles on public roadways. These programs are still largely in the infancy stage in states like Oregon, Utah and Virginia.
As regions and states shift away from paying for transportation infrastructure via fuel sale-based funding, Strobridge said, they will be looking for smarter and more efficient tolling systems.
