Case Study California's SR-91 Express Lanes Innovations ... - Sirit

Case Study
California’s SR-91 Express Lanes
Innovations – Ahead of Their Time

California’s 91 Express Lanes – Innovations – Ahead of Their Time
Introduction:
The State Route 91, known as the SR-91, allows travel between Riverside County and
Orange County and is one of the most congested freeways in Southern California and the
United States. Everyday, thousands of Riverside and Orange County residents can
experience total commute times of up to 3 hours to get to/from their places of
employment, over 3 times the national average. The SR-91 is currently carrying more
than 280,000 vehicles per day with an expected growth to more than 425,000 vehicles per
day by the year 2025.
By the early 1990s, a rapid development of areas of Riverside County, also called the
Inland Empire, had made the SR-91 Freeway one of the most congested freeways in the
Greater Los Angeles region. The SR-91 is a 12 lane freeway connecting the employment
centers of Orange County to the residential bedroom communities and industrial areas of
Riverside County. No other alternate routes are available through the rugged terrain of
the Santa Ana Mountains which separate the two counties. The SR-91 is subject to very
high traffic volumes, made up of primarily commuters traveling from where the live in
Riverside County to where they work in Orange County. Traffic reporters often refer to
the congestion as “The Corona Crawl”. Enter the 91 Express Lanes.
Overview:
The 91 Express Lanes are located in the median between the eastbound and westbound
lanes of the SR-91 Freeway between the junction of SR-55 and the Orange/Riverside
County Line. The 91 Express Lanes provide two extra lanes in each direction for most of
the 10 mile length of SR-91. A third HOT lane is present at approximately the halfway
point where the tolling zone is located. The 91 Express Lanes are separated from the
adjacent SR-91 Freeway lanes by a “soft” barrier of a stripped buffer zone with pylons
for the entire 10 mile length. The lanes operate as an express roadway, which means that
there are no intermediate entrances or exits and heavy goods vehicles are prohibited.

The 91 Express Lanes include a number of innovations which make it one of the most
interesting highway transportation experiments to come along in quite some time.
History:
The 91 Express Lanes are a 10 mile long, 4 lane toll facility built for approximately $134
million USD as a private for-profit investment by the California Private Transportation
Company (CPTC). The 91 Express Lanes are one of four such public-private partnership
experiments that were authorized by the California Legislature under bill AB 680 enacted
and singed into law in 1989. The SR-91 became a candidate for implementation under
AB 680 due to the region’s inability to be able to fund required improvements within a
short timeframe. It is estimated that if public funds had been used, the implemented
improvements would have taken and additional 5+years longer than construction of the
91 Express Lanes actually took.
Under direct supervision of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the
91 Express Lanes were designed, built and were operated by the CPTC on land leased
from the State of California for $1 per year. The agreement gave CPTC a 35 year
franchise to operate the toll lanes, after which the facility would revert to State control.
Prior to opening the 91 Express Lanes for traffic on December 27, 1995, CPTC
transferred ownership of the facility to the State of California. Caltrans then leased the
toll road back to CPTC for a 35 year operating period.
The 91 Express Lanes had a period of controversy because of a “non-compete”
agreement that the State of California made with CPTC. The clause of the contract

negotiated by Caltrans, which was never brought before the state legislature, prevented
any improvements along 30 miles of the SR-91 to insure profits for the 91 Express Lanes.
This clause also included restrictions from widening the free lanes of the freeway or
building mass transit near the freeway.
In April 2002, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) reached an
agreement to purchase the private toll road project for $207.5 million US. OCTA took
possession of the 91 Express Lanes on January 3, 2003, marking the first time the 91
Express Lanes was owned, operated, and managed by a public agency. Within a few
months, the OCTA turned the 91 Express Lanes into the High Occupancy Tolling / toll
road hybrid that it is today.
The original toll system was developed and installed in 1995 by MFS Technologies and
the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers and transponders used for Automatic
Vehicle Identification (AVI) was supplied by Texas Instruments Radio frequency
Identification Systems (TIRIS) now known as Sirit. In 2003, OCTA contracted with Sirit
for a complete modernization and replacement of the lane level system, both hardware
and software. The system was designed, developed and installed by Sirit in a record time
of 9 months, again making the SR-91 the premier Open Road Tolling (ORT) Nonstop
Free Flow system in the world.
This new lane level based system was one of the first such systems in the toll industry
developed entirely using Microsoft Windows®, Windows® SQL databases, and
Microsoft® development tools. While the majority of the toll industry used UNIX® and
Linux® platforms, OCTA allowed Sirit to introduce innovation through this
groundbreaking use of Microsoft® products. This approach allowed Sirit to design and
develop an extremely modular and flexible system which easily allows introduction of
new technology through the development of a simple module, instead of a rewrite of the
Lane Controller software a common requirement in UNIX®/Linux® based systems. The
Lane Controller software is controlled by values contained in a Parameter File outside the
actual Lane Controller code. The Lane Controller features, functions and transaction
framing logic are all based on these parameters. This approach allows modification of
the Lane Controller functions and timing by simply changing a parameter in the
Parameter File and restarting the Lane Controller, whereas in the past, the Lane
Controller software had to be modified and recompiled to make even the simplest
modification to the way the Lane Controller behaved. The lane level system developed
by Sirit also provides for hardware independence, both in the hardware platform which
the software operates on and the different sensors, readers and video subsystems which
the software must interact with. Lane level systems of the past usually had a design life
of 5 – 8 years. This unique approach extends the design life of the lane level system
virtually indefinitely, as new features and functions released by Microsoft® are easily
incorporated, and the modular design allows for easy inclusion of this new technology.
This approach also allows the system to be easily transportable to other type of tolling
applications, as the functions are parameter driven and not just tailored to a specific
tolling application or technique.

Sirit continues to provide ongoing onsite support for the system, and all transponders and
readers are now supplied by Sirit. The back office software was modernized by Northern
Lakes Data Corporation (NLDC).
SR-91 Innovations:
Opening in 1995, the 91 Express Lanes project was the first privately funded toll road
built in the US since the 1940s.
Also of note is that the 91 Express Lanes was the first fully automatic, nonstop, open road
tolling system implemented in the world. The 91 Express Lanes have served as the
model for the now emerging toll road designs labeled as Multi Lane Free Flow (MLFF)
toll roads being considered and built in many countries around the world. Most of the 50
US State Department of Transportation organizations, as well as, many foreign Ministries
of Transportation have taken a tour of the 91 Express Lane facility and received a
thorough briefing on the system and how it operates.
Tolls are collected when a vehicle carrying a FasTrak® transponder, issued by any toll
agency in the State of California and adhering to the open standard Caltrans Title 21
protocol, passes beneath the toll zone gantry without stopping, and at highway speeds.
The toll zone is located at the mid point of the express lanes, roughly the 5 mile point in
both directions of travel.

Every vehicle which travels the 91 Express lanes must have a transponder, regardless of
whether a toll is charged or not.
Any vehicle not equipped with a transponder is considered a violator. The 91 Express
Lanes was an early adopter of a Violation Enforcement Systems (VES) using video
cameras and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to capture images of violators and
process the violations through the VES, enabling collection of tolls and fines associated
with violations. The 91 Express Lane system has captured the license plate of all
vehicles traveling through the toll zone since the 2003 upgrade, and has been very
successful in recouping violation fines and tolls. The current lane system captures license
plate images and performs OCR within 375 milliseconds of the time the vehicle exits the
toll zone. Through use of the Real Time Enforcement Display (RTED) subsystem
included with the lane modernization, lane level information and the license plate image
can be transmitted to California Highway Patrol (CHP) in real time, and the violator of
the HOV/HOT occupancy requirements can be stopped and a citation issued at the
instance of the violation.

For vehicles with no transponder, a violation notice is generated and mailed to the owner
of the violating vehicle for collection of tolls and fines.
Congestion Pricing, a model for influencing drivers to use toll roads during off-peak
hours by paying a lesser toll when the roads are less congested is becoming standard
practice around the world. The 91 Express Lanes implemented this strategy in 1995.
Toll rates vary depending on the direction of travel, time of day, and day of the week.
The more congested the road during peak hours, the higher the toll. The 91 Express
Lanes publishes a toll rate schedule on their website and updates the rates periodically
based on ongoing traffic studies determining the congestion of vehicles on the roadway,
both the express lanes and the freeway lanes.

Discounts, and even free passage, are offered for HOV 3+ users during certain times of
the day to provide an incentive for car pooling.
In addition, the current toll rate is published on variable message signs before the
entrance to the 91 Express Lanes, allowing the vehicle driver to be able to make the
decision on whether to take the express lanes or stay on the freeway and pay no toll.

The 91 Express Lanes employ a state-of-the art website www.91expresslanes.com which
provides for online account management, real time traffic reports to help motorists plan
their commute, toll rate schedules, and even a virtual drive on the 91 Express Lanes.
Has the 91 Express Lanes been a successful experiment in innovation? The US
Department of Transportation says yes. The average speed of vehicles in the express
lanes averages over 60 mph when considering both on and off peak traffic, while the
average speed in the freeway lanes averages less than 15mph, considering both on and off
peak, with typical speeds averaging 1-5mph during peak hours. This reduces commute
times on an average of 20 -30 minutes each way for toll patrons of the express lanes.
The 91 Express Lanes, an innovation ahead of its time and the yardstick for adoption and
benefit success which other toll roads are now measuring themselves against. Improving
lives and changing the way the world thinks about traffic management systems.

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