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Case 3: New Jersey Turnpike Authority & ACS

Application:  Idris AT700 Tolling part of ACS' Vector Express Tolling Solution.  Two lane configuration in each direction designed to provide ORT (Open Road Tolling) functionality.

Background:  With 44,000 vehicles a day the Exit 1 tolling plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike is one of the busiest in the United States. Yet as late as 2004, traffic was being forced to use a plaza that had remained largely unaltered since the middle of the last century.

History:  As early as 1999, the NJTA had made attempts to improve traffic flow  and eradicate the 30 mile queues which were a common feature on the approaches to the plaza at busy holiday periods.  An outsourcing contract to WorldCom resulted in the introduction of ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) technology.

The initiative was not, unfortunately, a success and huge problems in terms of false violation detections and a myriad of other difficulties plagued the new technology. The situation rapidly deteriorated to the point where the NJTA felt obliged to call for a change not only in the service provider but also the underlying ETC technology that was seen to be failing.

On August 2nd 2002 NJTA signed a Professional Services contract with ACS, a company that already had proven ETC expertise.

Project Details:  NJTA laid down a number of strict criteria that ACS would be expected to meet. It was clear that the authority, having been once bitten was twice shy.  Among the criteria was a crucial requirement for the accurate detection and classification of vehicles using the express ETC lanes.  There was also a later addition to the contract which included the provision of four open road tolling (ORT) lanes (two in each direction).

The ORT system would need to be able to handle very high volumes of traffic traveling at 65 miles per hour (the legal maximum on New Jersey Turnpike).  Any failure in this regard would unquestionably have led to a further drop in public confidence and immense embarrassment for the Authority.

ACS ed the AVC system developed by Diamond Consulting Services, the Idris AT700.  The system more than fulfilled the requirements set down in the NJTA specification and functioned as a component in ACS' overall solution the “Vector Express Tolling Solution”. Capable of accurately classifying vehicles traveling at speeds well in excess of the legal limit in over 99.5% of occasions, the Idris system is ideally geared to the demanding environment of ORT.

Results:  With the move to the new plaza, Exit 1 was opened in the summer of 2004 and the Idris AT700 went into operational use. The impact of Vector Express and Idris technology was immediate, with the number of violations dropping from 6.6% before the introduction of the solution, to below 3% for the express lanes and a figure of 1.8% across the toll road - one of the lowest of any tolling plaza in the US.

Nor were the improvements confined to the vast numbers of private motorists who choose to use the turnpike, including the 150,000 new customers for the E-ZPass system in 2004. The exceptional accuracy of the Idris system meant that it comfortably dealt with heavy goods, multiple axle vehicles, allowing the correct toll fees to be charged automatically according to the classification of each vehicle. Perhaps more to the point, the express lanes meant fewer delays leading to improved customer satisfaction and increased revenue for the client. Conclusion:  At the heart of the AVC system are the Idris advanced algorithms that not only perform the detection and classification functions, but also process data with such accuracy and speed as to generate a unique identifier or vehicle signature. This enables  real-time correlation to be made between the in-vehicle tag and the signals produced by the inductive loops – the Idris AVI Correlation feature.

Due to the success of the ACS tolling solution “Vector Express”, NJTA are continuing the deployment of the Idris Technology on all their multi-lane express lanes on both the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike.

The Idris Technology is protected by one or more of the following patents:
EP0879457, USA 6345228, 6483443 and 6337640
Registered Patents also include but not limited to European Countries, Brazil, Mexico, Canada & Australia.
Idris® is a registered trademark of Diamond Consulting Services Ltd. 

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