E-ZPass: Case Study of Institutional and Organizational Issues in Technology Standards Development

Abstract

During the past 5 years seven toll agencies operating in the greater New York metropolitan area have combined to develop a regionally compatible electronic toll collection system, called E-ZPass. The members of the E-ZPass Interagency Group (IAG) collectively process more than 1 billion toll transactions per year, two-thirds of all toll revenue collected in the United States. E-ZPass illustrates the degree of interagency cooperation necessary for interoperability, as well as some of the challenges to achieving consensus on technical and institutional issues. The IAG faced numerous institutional and organizational issues during the development of the E-ZPass specification. These included separate procurement procedures and requirements of the participating agencies, differences in agency missions, the pace of technological change, and parallel standard-setting efforts at the national level. In the large-scale procurement of cutting-edge technology, the IAG's regionally cooperative effort is unprecedented and provides valuable insights into the conflicts that occur and how they can be resolved.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Zhang

Primer on Electronic Toll Collection Technologies. In Transportation Research Record 1516, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1995, pp. 1–10.

Gifford

Standards for Intelligent Vehicle Highway System Technologies. In Transportation Research Record 1358, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1992, pp. 22–28.

Gifford

, and Ygnace

. Technology Standards and Deployment of Advanced Transportation Technologies: A Comparative Case Study of Electronic Toll and Traffic Management (ETTM) in the United States and France. Proc. 4th International Conference on the Applications of Advanced Technologies in Transportation Engineering, Capri, Italy, June 27–30, 1995.

Comparative Traffic Statistics, 1992–1993. International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association.

E-ZPass and The Interagency Group. E-ZPass Interagency Group, 1994.

Edelemen

, and Einreinhofer

. Institutional Issues in ITMS—TRANSCOM's Experience in NY and NJ. Unpublished paper, TRANSCOM, pp. 1–2.

Spock

Summary of speech presented to the I-95 Corridor Coalition. In Public Private Partnerships in I-95: Summary of Workshop Proceedings. I-95 Corridor Coalition, Nov. 1993.

Interagency Policy Statement on Electronic Tolls and Traffic Management. E-ZPass Interagency Group, March 1991.

Interagency Technology Selection: A Case Study. The E-ZPass Interagency Procurement Committee, 1993, p. 3.

10.

E-ZPass. New York State Thruway Authority, 1994, p. 3.

11.

Rifkin

Electronic Toll-Taking Is Being Put to the Test. The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1992, Sect D., p. 1.

12.

Marshall

K. R.

, and Batz

. The TRANSCOM Transmit Project: An Alternative Approach for Traffic Surveillance and Incident Detection. TRANSCOM, 1996.