Construction crews completed the central span of the new Port Mann bridge in June this year. The new tolling system is planned to be operational across eight lanes in December 2012, serving more than 130,000 vehicles per day
Pete Goldin reports on a new Egis project in Canada, providing open road tolling operations for the widest bridge in the world.
A bridge can present a bottleneck in a system of roads or it can support the smooth and unobstructed flow of traffic. Much depends on the bridge design, surrounding infrastructure and tolling system. By adding lanes and deploying open road tolling (ORT), the new Port Mann Bridge located in the metropolitan Vancouver area in British Columbia, will alleviate congestion at one of the region’s top traffic chokepoints.The
The new cable stayed structure is being built alongside the existing Port Mann bridge which will be demolished after the new bridge is opened.
Construction crews completed the new bridge’s central span in June and the tolling system is planned to be operational across eight lanes in December 2012, serving more than 130,000 vehicles per day expected to cross the Port Mann Bridge.
The new Port Mann bridge – connecting Surrey and Coquitlam over the Fraser River east of Vancouver – will be the second tolled river crossing in British Columbia, after the Golden Ears Bridge which opened in 2009, also operated by Egis and Sanef.
Eliminating the bottleneck
The current Port Mann Bridge was built in the early 1960s, back when the population of Vancouver was 800,000. Today, more than 800,000 vehicles cross the bridge every week. The five-lane bridge has become uneconomic to maintain and unable to handle the increasing volume of traffic, resulting in chronic congestion lasting up to 14 hours every day.British Columbia’s Port Mann Highway 1 Improvement Project is designed to address this congestion and provide a regional transportation corridor that can accommodate the more than 2.2 million people that call Vancouver home, as well as additional growth of one million residents expected in the region over the next 30 years.
“The new Port Mann Bridge and its associated Highway 1 improvements are going to create an entirely new and improved commute,” explains Mike Proudfoot, chief executive officer for Transportation Investment Corporation (TI Corp), the public concessionaire of the Port Mann/Highway 1 Improvement Project. “Safer, faster and more fuel efficient, the flow of goods important to British Columbia’s economy will be enhanced and commuters will spend less time on the road and more time with their families or customers.”
The largest transportation infrastructure project in British Columbia’s history, the Port Mann Highway 1 project includes doubling capacity over the Fraser River; widening 37 km of highway from Vancouver to Langley; adding 30 km of new HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes; and replacement of nine highway interchanges. Once complete, the project is expected to reduce travel times by up to 30%, and save drivers in the greater Vancouver area up to an hour a day.
Rolling and tolling
The centrepiece of the overall scheme is the CAD$3.3bn construction of the new 10-lane Port Mann Bridge, equipped with ORT (also known as an all-electronic tolling system).The innovative design allows for three through-lanes in each direction including one HOV and transit lane and two lanes dedicated for local connections on either side of the river.
Tolls for cars will be about $3 on opening day, with 25% HOV discounts during peak periods for registered carpools, and 50% overnight discounts for trucks.
British Columbia had not previously collected tolls on the bridge, but now the funds are needed to pay for the project’s bridge and highway construction.
TI Corp expects to take approximately 35-40 years to collect the necessary revenue to meet these obligations and fully repay the cost of the improvement project.
ORT is a key capability that will enable the bridge operators to collect these tolls without impeding traffic flow. Each vehicle registered to use the Port Mann ORT system will display a transponder sticker – an ISO 18000-6C decal with an embedded RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip – which will identify the vehicle as it passes the toll point on the bridge.
The Port Mann and Golden Ears Bridge electronic tolling systems will be fully interoperable, so users need a single transponder for both bridges. For added security and enforcement, cameras will also be deployed on the bridge to read license plates.
The ORT system is comprised of roadside and back-office systems. The roadside technology is an automatic vehicle identification (AVI) system. This is a combination of multi-protocol RFID antennas and receivers, and an automatic vehicle classification (AVC) system which includes overhead lasers, detection loops and license plate recognition (LPR) technology. The LPR system includes front and rear cameras with optical character recognition for automatically reading plates.
Customer service is key
The back office central system, also operated by Egis Projects-Sanef includes a website, phone communications and subsystems for customer relationship management (CRM), transactions and financial processing.Egis Projects and Sanef are equal shareholders of Trans-Canada Flow Tolling, the company contracted to provide a complete range of services for the tolling operations of the Port Mann Bridge for seven to 11 years, including distribution of tags to customers, manual image review processing, toll billing and financial reconciliation, enforcement and recovery of unpaid tolls, customer account management, marketing and communications support.
Trans-Canada Flow Tolling will also provide a unique multi-channel customer service programme featuring web-based self-service and social media channels, and supporting such activities as registration and payment of tolls. The company will offer users strong incentives to register for the bridge’s ORT system and receive free ISO 18000-6C decals. A dedicated multilingual call centre will cater for the anticipated high number of enquiries and registrations.
Efficient and fair
“Tolling on the new Port Mann Bridge will be efficient and based on principles of superior customer service, ease of use and fairness,” Proudfoot says.Users will have the option to register via the internet, telephone or at point-of-sale locations. In addition, bridge patrons may choose to pay before or after travel using a variety of payment methods, including online, phone, mail or in person at self-serve kiosks or customer service centres. Each payment channel is designed to offer a comprehensive set of services that minimise time spent creating and maintaining accounts.
“Social media channels will be used as an opportunity to interact and engage with the public,” Proudfoot adds. “Social media’s fast feedback loop with customers is now a key part of putting a fair and efficient tolling programme in place.”
Benefits expected to be delivered by the Port Mann ORT system include free-flowing, safer and more efficient tolling, when compared with traditional toll booths, as well as reduced capital expenditures and operating costs. Proudfoot adds: “This fully electronic free-flow tolling system means no exhaust emissions from idling cars at toll booths. Bridge users need not worry about having exact change or facing delays.”
