Our History
UTS was founded on this challenge: How can an individual connect communities and facilitate personal mobility where the local and state governments do not have the resources to provide a solution?
The answer is more common today than it was in 1993 when we constructed and operated the first private toll road in Alabama. A public-private partnership with state and local officials made the tolled expressway possible. The process was not easy – working with the public and locally elected officials, addressing environmental concerns, securing rights-of-way, and private funding were essential steps to creating a viable mobility solution.
Funding and building the toll bridge privately, in only ten months instead of the estimated 24 months, saved the State of Alabama millions of dollars on this one project alone. We didn’t stop with just this project, but also followed this same process with two additional projects. Building these additional roadways and bridges privately, within timelines well short of the public process estimates, saved the State of Alabama hundreds of millions of dollars more.
Even more challenging than privately building these toll facilities was finding a toll management system already on the market that could provide all of the features and functions required to operate the new toll roads. After investigating the existing toll management systems but not finding the right solution, we began defining and building a new system that would meet the specific needs.
Developing Ideas
We invested millions of dollars exclusively into tolling solutions, such as:
- Infinity∞ Digital Lane System™ - Expandable and modular
lane system hardware - IVIS™ - Reliable vehicle classification
- VCARS™ - Exceptional image quality for video tolling or violations processing
- ORT - Combining IVIS™, AVI and VCARS™ to create premier open road tolling solution
- DVAS™ - Digital Video Auditing System
- OCR/OSR - License plate processing system