Turnpike York Toll Plaza Study 061609

Maine Turnpike News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 16, 2009

CONTACT: Dan Paradee 871-7771 ext.117

Engineer reports on the feasibility of constructing new toll plaza on site where existing York Toll Plaza stands --Recommends advancing 3 options at the existing location and resuming study of alternate locations---Reduced size of proposed plaza likely to avoid home displacements-PORTLAND -- The Maine Turnpike Authority’s board of directors and selectmen from the Town of York met in Portland today to hear a presentation by the Turnpike’s general engineering consultant, HNTB, regarding the feasibility of constructing a new toll plaza, featuring highway speed toll collection, at the same location where the York Toll Plaza currently stands. The presentation by HNTB Vice President Roland Lavallee summarized a year-long study, which resulted in a 116 page report distributed at the meeting. Based in Kansas City, but with regional offices in Portland, HNTB is among the most experienced toll highway engineering firms in the nation, serving as general engineering consultant to 21 toll agencies throughout the United States. The Turnpike Authority has long planned to replace the existing York toll plaza, that Lavallee said is operating 15 years beyond its expected structural lifespan and has become increasingly, unsafe, inefficient and in need of constant repair. The York toll plaza is critical to the operation of the Maine Turnpike, collecting more than $36 million in toll revenue last year, more than half of which came from out-of-state motorists. With more than 50% of the cars and 80% of the trucks paying their tolls at the plaza with --more--

Page 2 of 4 E-ZPass, the Turnpike Authority determined early on that any new plaza must offer both cash and electronic highway speed toll collection. Highway speed tolling, also known as open road tolling would enable E-ZPass users to pay their tolls by simply passing beneath a sensor at 5565 mph hour. Cash lanes would still be available for less frequent turnpike users, tourists, business travelers and others who choose not to use E-ZPass, or come from states where it is not available. Existing Location Revisited A screening process, developed by HNTB based on environmental permitting criteria and national highway safety guidelines, resulted in the early dismissal of the existing toll plaza site as a potential location for the new plaza. The existing plaza’s location near a busy interchange, on a curve and at the bottom a hill violates basic engineering and safety guidelines for modern toll plaza design and operation. The York toll plaza is currently ranked as the 11th highest crash-rate location in the state. Given these deficiencies, the cost and environmental impacts of making a new toll plaza function safely and efficiently at the existing site were deemed to be prohibitive. However, in April of 2008, at the request of York Board of Selectmen, the Authority asked HNTB to conduct a more detailed study of the existing site and to develop a range of alternatives aimed at overcoming the deficiencies of that site. “We asked HNTB to turn over every stone and tell us what it would take to build a modern, safe and efficient toll plaza at the location where the York toll now stands,” said Turnpike Authority Chairman Gerard P. Conley Sr. On Tuesday, Lavallee presented nine different options all focused on the existing York toll location. They ranged from a “no build” option, to building newly configured ramps for the York interchange, to relocating the interchange, to realigning the mainline of the Turnpike itself. The options ranged in price from $12.3 million to $155 million. “Some of these options are extreme by some measures and reasonable by others,” Lavallee acknowledged. “But we were asked to investigate the full spectrum of possibilities, and that’s what we did,” he said. Recommendations In the end, Lavallee recommended that the Authority advance three of the nine options for further consideration. He said that the environmental permitting process will require the Authority to advance Option #1, the “no build” option. He also recommended advancing Option 4a and 4b, but qualified them as “only the best among a number of problematic choices.” He said that both 4a and 4b only marginally address engineering and safety concerns. --more--

Page 3 of 4 Option 4a attempts to eliminate the crash prone conflict between thru-traveling vehicles and those attempting to enter or depart at the York interchange by constructing new interchange ramps that extend around and beyond the toll plaza. Option 4b addresses the same problem to a lesser degree by requiring all cash paying vehicles and York interchange traffic to depart the mainline of the highway and pass through a traditional toll booth. “Options 4a and 4b fail to meet most of the of the engineering and safety guidelines and have considerable environmental impacts. But they are the best options we could identify at the existing location and therefore merit further consideration,” Lavallee said. Lavallee’s final recommendation was that the Authority resume its investigation of potential locations beyond the existing site. He said that the environmental permitting agencies will require that the Authority consider alternative sites. He also said that the advanced engineering conducted as part of the existing location study, particularly the reduction in size of the plaza from 21 to 15 lanes, may make alternative sites much more practical and appealing. Lavallee said that the smaller plaza footprint may now allow a new plaza to be built at an alternative location that would avoid the displacement of any homes while meeting engineering and safety guidelines, minimizing environmental and private property impacts and reducing project costs. “The only way to confirm these possibilities is to apply the advanced engineering that resulted from this study to other potential sites,” Lavallee said. All-Electronic Tolling? The HNTB report also examined the possibility of eliminating all cash toll collection at the plaza and collecting all tolls electronically. Under an all-electronic toll system, tolls would be collected from non-E-ZPass customers by photographing their license plates, using the plate number to obtain their mailing addresses and sending them a bill for the toll. While some toll agencies are contemplating such a system, none have been implemented in the northeast. Lavallee argues that the Maine Turnpike’s diverse customer-base makes such an innovation more difficult and financially risky in Maine than elsewhere. Lavallee said that the first all electronic systems will likely be implemented on highways and bridges that have a heavy concentration of daily commuter traffic and have E-ZPass user rates in excess of 80 percent. He said that it is also important that the vast majority of users live within the same general jurisdiction, making it possible to acquire the necessary information to bill customers and to enforce payment if the bill is ignored. The Maine Turnpike’s customer-base shares none of these characteristics, according to Lavallee. The Maine Turnpike is not a commuter-dominated highway. It serves a widely diverse customer-base, which is largely made up of infrequent users, tourists and out-of-state businesses. More than 50% of the traffic at York toll plaza comes from out-of-state, making the process of tracking down mailing addresses and sending individual bills to all non-E-ZPass customers extremely difficult and expensive, he explained. --more--

Page 4 of 4 “The toll industry has been talking about developing an effective reciprocity and enforcement system between states for twenty years now, but there’s been very little progress,” Lavallee said. “ It would be very risky to implement an all-electronic toll system on the faint hope that interstate reciprocity and enforcement will come into existence within the foreseeable future.” he said. The HNTB report estimates a move to all-electronic-toll collection could cost the Authority as much as $17 million in uncollectable tolls during the first year. “If you cannot reliably collect tolls from the large number of infrequent out-of-state users, you have no choice but to increase the burden to your regular in-state customers, and that would not be fair,” Lavallee said. “The Maine Turnpike has been a leader in many areas, but we don’t believe a relatively blind leap into all-electronic toll collection is in the best interest of the Authority or Maine toll payers,” he said. Lavallee recommended that the new toll plaza be designed to handle both E-ZPass and cash transactions, while ensuring that the transition to all electronic toll collection is possible and cost effective should it become a feasible option in the future. Next Steps Turnpike Authority Chairman Gerard P. Conley said that York selectmen will be invited to another meeting in the late summer or early fall to discuss the report in more detail. Conley also said that HNTB staff would be willing to meet with the engineering firm hired by the Town of York to discuss the report. “I think we all need to take the report home, read it carefully, write down our questions and submit them to HNTB before the next meeting. That will make the best of everyone’s time and resources,” he said. Conley said that meetings between the Authority and the Board of Selectmen are not substitutes for broader public meetings that must take place as part of the study. He said that he looks forward to working with the selectman to assure that local residents have ample opportunity to comment on the study. ###