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Open Road Tolling

Innovative Technologies for Tolling

The benefits of Open Road Tolling (ORT) to toll authorities and customers alike are changing the industry today. Customers can drive through ORT lanes at highway speeds without stopping or slowing at toll plazas, avoiding congestion and interruptions in travel plans, and still pay their tolls with toll tags (transponders) or by their license plates (Video Tolling).

Toll authorities implementing ORT solutions are leveraging technology to establish completely electronic toll collection. This means no toll booths, no attendant staffing, and no collection and management of cash; the operational cost savings are significant.

The UTS ORT solution uniquely combines vehicle classification, video capture, license plate recognition, and a digital video auditing system (DVAS) to form consistent and accurate toll transactions.

The UTS ORT solution leverages these core UTS technologies:

• IVIS™ (Intelligent Vehicle Identification System) –
  Our patented classification method provides extremely accurate axle-based vehicle classification. The in-ground IVIS sensors do not have moving parts like a treadle does and are not affected by weather conditions such as heavy rain, snow, and ice. These specialized sensors can be installed in new or existing roadways to ensure complete vehicle detection and classification coverage within the entire ORT zone, including shoulders and lane-straddling areas. IVIS is covered by numerous US and foreign patents. Please see the IVIS section for a detailed listing of IVIS patents.
• VCARS™ (Vehicle Capture and Recognition System) –
  The VCARS™ unit was developed by UTS to be the most advanced ORT imaging solution available in the tolling industry. The VCARS™ uses dual high speed digital cameras to capture very high resolution images of the vehicle. Having two cameras, as opposed to the single camera units widely available today, allows the VCARS™ to capture stereoscopic images of the vehicle. This stereoscopic camera configuration eliminates on-axis glare from the sun and allows full imaging of license plates that would otherwise be masked by trailer hitches and other plate obstructions. The VCARS™ cameras also feature full PTZ capability allowing camera tuning and alignment to be performed over the network under live traffic conditions, without the need for a road closure. UTS developed the VCARS™ unit to be extremely reliable and easy to maintain. Each camera in the VCARS™ unit is on its own dedicated controller, and each has its own power, trigger and lighting systems so that if any one of the critical components were to fail, the VCARS™ can continue to operate and collect license plate images/revenue for the Authority. VCARS™ also gives maintenance personnel the ability to monitor environmental and performance parameters in real time and to make any needed adjustments from a centralized maintenance monitoring center.
• DVAS (Digital Video Auditing System) –
  The DVAS system provides video and still image capture of the entire multi-lane ORT zone. In addition to the VCARS™ images, UTS cameras mounted in the gantry capture digital video and still images of the entire ORT Zone. These images and video are synchronized to the transactional data and are stored digitally on a separate server from the transaction for immediate retrieval. When necessary, personnel can use our video and image viewing tool to search and retrieve DVAS images associated with vehicle transactions within the ORT zone.
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition) –
  The UTS ORT solution features automated in-lane OCR processing. Aside from providing real-time video tolling capability, the UTS OCR serves as a cost effective method of analysis that can reduce the burden on violation processing resources and eliminate errors introduced with manual plate reviews.
• OSR (Optical State Recognition) –
  The UTS OSR solution is able to digitally identify both plate state as well as the type of plate within the state. The UTS optical state recognition system is another layer of analysis which ensures the customer’s transaction data is correctly identified, thus saving the Authority a tremendous amount of time and money.
• Video Tolling –
  UTS offers a complete video tolling solution featuring immediate in-lane Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Optical State Recognition (OSR) results for the vehicles passing through the zone. These OCR / OSR results can be instantly checked against a database of known plates and statuses such as registered patron, authorized rental, or chronic toll violator. This UTS video tolling solution provides an alternative for customers that do not have valid toll tags (transponders) and is an ideal solution for infrequent users of a tolled roadway, such as visitors in rental cars.
• TekTrak™ –
  The UTS TekTrak™ is a patent-pending hardware innovation for mounting toll equipment in an ORT zone. The TekTrak™ is a track and rail system that mounts to most any type of gantry structure. TekTrak™ facilitates installation and ongoing maintenance, repair, and replacement of overhead equipment from the roadside, behind the guardrail, without requiring lane closures and without placing maintenance personnel and equipment over live traffic lanes. Once TekTrak™ is quickly and efficiently installed, the Authority does not have to close the roadway again for toll systems maintenance. All work on the overhead equipment can be performed safely from roadside. This is a substantial benefit to tolling authorities. Road closures, whether scheduled or not, cause loss of revenue to the Authority, inconvenience to the roadway patrons, substantial expense for the Authority for maintenance of traffic and they create unnecessary safety risks to patrons and maintenance personnel.
• Live Video Surveillance –
  Authority or management personnel can see traffic flow and activities on a multiple-monitor workstation from live real-time video feeds of the lane areas, interiors of the facility, and any remote ramps. The monitors show several camera views simultaneously. The views can be customized and grouped for convenience, for example, “All Southbound ORT Lanes”. The live video can be used to observe traffic and roadway conditions, as well as for performing spot audits for system accuracy verification.
• Infinity∞ Digital Lane System –
  The Infinity∞ Digital Lane System for Open Road Tolling uses redundant ORT Controllers and Lane Servers to consolidate IVIS, Video, and ETC data to form a complete individual vehicle transaction. This is a unique ORT solution that runs on the same blade-based hardware as our single lane solution. The blade-based components of the ORT system may be hot swapped while the system continues to run and process traffic. The configuration is specific to the particular environment of each our customers. The ORT transaction formed in the lane is stored at the Plaza and replicated in the Service Center. One critical element of an ORT solution is the system availability – it needs to be continuously available 24/7/365. We are pleased to report that since the opening of the first road using the UTS ORT Infinity∞ Digital Lane System, we have experienced 100% availability without a single system shutdown.