Latest Technologies, Growth in All-Electronic Tolling and Managed Lanes Facilities Make for a Compelling Program in Charlotte

Matthew Click, Vice President and National Director of Priced Managed Lanes at HNTB Corporation, and Beau Memory, Executive Director of the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, are Co-Chief Meeting Organizers for IBTTA’s Managed Lanes, AET & Technology Summit, April 22-24, 2018 in Charlotte, NC. In this interview with Tolling Points, they share the focus on technology innovation that will make the Summit a must-attend event.

What do you see as the most important developments in tolling technology over the last year?

BM: North Carolina was the first state in the nation to deploy multi-protocol readers utilizing all of the protocols currently being tested by IBTTA as part of the drive for national interoperability, and I think the testing, approvals, and implementation associated with that technology have been key in advancing the industry.

We’re seeing fascinating technologies to deter and alert wrong-way drivers, combining numerous components to make our roadways safer.

Autonomous and connected vehicles are certainly a topic on everyone’s minds as we look ahead to the next few years, when we’ll be seeing these auto-type features make their way into production vehicles.

Analytics technology has been a great boon to the industry. We’re producing so much data, but the key questions are what we’re doing with it, how we organize it, and what we can learn from it to improve our service to customers and our ability to operate more competitively and efficiently.

What makes this a compelling conference program for tolling professionals who are not technology specialists?

MC: The Summit is about how the tolling industry continues to work with the larger advances in technology, and how that will shift the way we deliver excellent service to our customer base.

I’m not a technologist. I’m a policy planner by training, and an express lane person, and what’s really interesting to me is how quickly the broader world of technology is moving. The last 10 years have seen the advent of the iPhone and its impact on transportation—from Google, to Waze, to the platform it provides for services like Uber and Lyft. The pace of technology is ever-accelerating, it’s shifting the expectations of tolling customers, and we’re also seeing specific tolling technologies evolve to meet those needs. I’ll be curious to see how the broader transportation trends and the tolling-specific technologies interact to benefit customers across the larger transportation network.

To what extent is the focus of the AET, Managed Lanes &Technology Summit shifting from initial rollout to scaling up?

BM: I’ve been attending this conference now for about a decade. Every year, we see agencies trying something new. Because IBTTA has a growing community of private and public agencies, we can learn from best practices and talk to people who’ve actually implemented the technologies we’re considering. We can take those insights and see what we can do to build on the experience. What North Carolina did on interoperability and tri-protocol readers was only possible because of the knowledge we gained at IBTTA conferences.

MC: We’re still looking at driving cash out of the system, and that’s continuing to scale up. But we’re also looking at the different channels or methods to achieve all-electronic tolling, beyond the technologies we see today. The express lane space is evolving from single or multiple, distinct facilities within a region to projects that are built to touch each other and flow into one another, forming a system of express lanes within a metropolitan region. That leap to a system of interconnected lanes means rethinking and re-evaluating how we deliver our projects, looking at the toll policy, the technology, the design, and the ongoing operations. It’s a really broad set of issues to address.

The conference subtitle is based on Tim Stewart’s theme for the year, Trust and Accountability. How does modern tolling technology support that language and thinking?

MC: To me, the trust and accountability is in our obligation to make sure the information we collect and all the technology we utilize is devoted to improving the customer experience. When we ask customers to put additional technology in their vehicle, or use technology to capture their license plate, and that record is going to be attached to their banking information, that connects directly to trust and accountability. We must make sure to use technology in a responsible way that benefits the customer and do that in an accountable way. It’s a compact that we will only use this technology to benefit them.

The AET Summit features the popular Tech Talks series, to give participants bite-sized snapshots of the latest tolling innovations. Which topics are you most looking forward to?

MC: I’m really excited about the sessions on how express lanes are functioning in Texas, and on the future of mobile phone tolling as a next-generation application for toll payment.

BM: I’m looking forward to the session on data analytics. We’ll be hearing from a North Carolina firm whose data analysis platform allows us to look at our projects and what’s happening on our facilities in an entirely new and much more meaningful way. Hearing the reaction from the tolling community will be exciting for me and our agency.

What can participants expect to see, hear, and learn from the local experience in Charlotte that will make their time at the Summit especially worthwhile?

BM: Charlotte is a fast-growing community in a quick-growing state, and it’s learning about tolling as we speak. The city will have its first tolled facility open by the end of this calendar year. We are going to be in a community that is now embracing tolling in a dynamic urban environment and seeing how these technologies resonate in an area that’s never had them before.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

MC: We’ve built a program that offers a lot of learning opportunities and real-world case studies of solutions that are being implemented. There’s a lot of knowledge and experience to share, and that will make the Charlotte Summit a great learning opportunity and a super setting for networking with our colleagues and peers.

Sign up today for IBTTA’s Managed, Lanes, AET & Technology Summit, April 22-24, 2018 in Charlotte, NC.