This week’s question is about interoperability and open road tolling – in recognition of the workshop we just held in Boston. But first, a skating story.
This morning I rotated the wheels on my Rollerblade inline skates. The manufacturer recommends rotating the wheels periodically to avoid uneven wear patterns that could shorten the life of the wheels and cause accident or injury to the skater. So with my newly rotated wheels, I enjoyed one of the smoothest and comfortable skating experiences in weeks. Funny how that works. And much appreciated.
In Boston on Sunday through Tuesday of this week, more than 100 speakers and 375 delegates engaged in dialogue, debate, and discussion on a host of issues under the theme “The Future of Tolling: Going Mainstream Through ORT and Interoperability.” The members of IBTTA have some very definite convictions about interoperability, open road tolling, the prospect of vehicle miles traveled charging, and a host of related issues. Throughout the three days of meetings, I sat and stood with clusters of different people during meals and refreshment breaks and listened intently to the many ideas tossed about. Sometimes a person would be brimming with such energy and passion they would start to assert their own ideas even before the other person finished talking. This often happens at the dinner table in my family, so I realize it’s hard to avoid this level of passion in the tolling family.
However, reflecting on my Rollerblade ride this morning, it occurred to me that occasionally we exert some well-worn views without checking their condition. Is it possible that the “wear pattern” on our interoperability ideas is a bit uneven because we haven’t “rotated the wheels” lately? Think about it. What would happen if you rotated the wheels on your ideas about interoperability and ORT? Or better still, what would happen if you put on someone else’s skates – their ideas – and went for a spin? What would the ride feel like and how might you see the world differently?
So, the question for this week is to discover what happens when you rotate the wheels on interoperability? Take your own ideas and rotate them to avoid the “uneven wear pattern” that sometimes happens when you ride on them in the same position for too long – and tell us what your new idea looks like. Or, try on someone else’s ideas about interoperability and tell us what the world looks like through that new set of skates? Totally stumped? Then take a fresh approach to tell us what you think should be done to advance tolling interoperability in North America. If you need inspiration, you can consult the blog posting and comments from January at this link: http://ibtta.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-should-be-done-about.html
Thursday, May 27, 2010
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Here is a simple idea for a big first step towards interoperability this year:
ReplyDeleteA central data base of customer license plate numbers, established without any customer information.
When an agency would capture an "out of state" (or in the case of an E-ZPass agency "out of system") license plate using the agencies' existing violation system, the agency would send that plate number to the central data base.
The plate number would then be compared to the customer plates in the data base.
If there was a match to a customer file that transaction would then be sent to the agency holding the account for payment through the central processor (potentially less a small fee).
This system could be established this year and would save agencies in mailing and "out of state collection" costs. An agency could also enable this with a customer buy.
Taking the first step towards a ‘new way of doing things’ is not always easy – in fact it can be down right brutal because every agency has it’s own individual needs, commitments and processes. One cannot demand change in an agency so finding the closest common thread is necessary for success. Taking that first step is essential to promote a national movement.
I encourage comments as this is the baseline process that Alliance for Toll Interoperability is planning to roll out. The draft spec is available at: https://www.tollinterop.org/DocLib/Documents/Technical/Stage%201%20Specification%20100%25%20Draft.pdf
Another problem of interoperability that needs to be solved is payment by “non-customers”, i.e. customers without an established toll account. We must frame a strong, but fair, mechanism to enforce toll payment across state lines. Working together on a state to state or regional level to arrange agreements that essentially say “If you enforce our tolls on your citizens, we’ll enforce your tolls on our citizens” will provide a way to deal with uncollectible tolls, as well as send a strong message that we will pursue all violators. As more states are utilize tolls to supplement revenue shortfalls and as All Electronic Tolling (AET) programs develop, possibly evolving into VMT programs, establishing strong enforcement agreements is a must.
ReplyDeleteAllegorical interpretation
ReplyDeletePat, I picked up my inline skates and took a good hard look at them as a result of your query. When I bought them, I didn’t really know what I wanted and the manufacturer, I thought, was the expert, so he sold me a pair of his skates that he spent millions of dollars developing to his unique specifications. All I wanted was to be mobile. He assured me that he had a product that would provide me mobility. I bought them since I was new to this anyway.
The product did provide me mobility. In fact, they came with an American Flag emblazoned on them and a certification of being “Made in America” which catered to my patriotic bias. The wheels of the skates were small, round and made of american oak, with a unique and proprietary mounting screw and adapter. They provided me mobility but I was limited in that mobility to only very smooth surfaces and had problems with the other in-line skaters of the world who seemed to glide smooth and perform other feats that my skates did not. As I tried to change the wheels of my skates I found that the mounting adapter was unique and I could only purchase new wheels from the supplier whom I purchased the skates. He offered me his new line of replacement wheels, which were even smaller but with a new adapter I could mount them or the old wheels onto my existing skates. The old wheels were replaceable, but were more expensive than the new, smaller ones, but the newer ones promised a smoother ride.
It was then that I realized that I was trapped. I could still skate, but my line of rollerblade, in-line skates with their new proprietary adapter worked and I did have mobility at a basic level. I saw, however, the other larger wheels in the store, but they were European or Japanese or Taiwanese wheels with an international, standard interface. The salesperson in the store stated that these were used around the world with great success and I could pick any one of these international standard replacement wheels and they mounted on standard adapters to any one of several brands of skates that are sold globally. To prove it, he took out several replacement wheels and showed me that with a simple locking adapter, any one of the several wheels fit and I could mix and match to my liking. He even promoted a few that had longer wear; one or two that were interchangeable with my rolling luggage; a few that while not lasting as long as the harder rubber wheels provided a smoother ride and allowed me to perform other tricks that I would never attempt with my proprietary wheels for fear of embarrassing or possibly hurting myself. The new ranges of mobility excited me and the interoperability of the wheels changed my vision of mobility, or at least what I knew to date as mobility.
Alas, the downside was that I had to discard my old in-line skates with their American made wheels. The new ones just didn’t fit the old one. When I bought them, all I wanted to do was skate, but now that I was proficient with just skating the idea of skating freer, with more mobility and in new directions excited my memory. The price to change the in-line skates wasn’t really that bad, but I did have to discard my old skates with the proprietary wheels that were now outdated, broke when I tried to change them or switch them. In addition to limiting my use, compared to other skaters who used the interoperable replacement wheels on their skates, they seemed to enjoy more flexibility and adaptability to new tricks that I couldn’t even attempt.
I guess interoperability means change and transformation if I want to skate into the future – but the smoother ride and ability to adapt to new tricks are worth it!
I'd like to share with you an article published today in the Portuguese Press:
ReplyDelete"Identifier in cars mandatory from July 1, 2010"
"The Secretary of State for Public Works announced today that it will be mandatory in cars using identifiers from July 1.
According to Paul Campos, there will be a transition year and only after that period the compulsory use of identifiers becomes effective.
"This requirement becomes effective after one year. It will be necessary or effective for cars that run on roads where it will charge tolls, especially on the three motorways [northern] that are going to charge tolls" , said Secretary of State Lusa, on the sidelines of the 16th Congress of the International Road Federation.
Paulo Campos said that this will be one of the systems so you can make payment by the three SCUT (Shadow Tolls), but there are also "transition mechanisms for which there are no problems in the early days."
The minister stressed that it is a matter "of great technological complexity" and that "the question that arises is to articulate [the system] with all utilities and ensure that the system works perfectly, especially with the new methods of payment" .
The secretary of state said that from July 1 will be available new forms of payments on motorways, including the prepayment, by loading a card, and post-payment that allows you to pay after circling the self-road."
This shows that under significant budgetary constraints you end up having the pressure and determination from legislators and decision makers to act. Has many times pointed out technology, though a challenge, it is not the issue.
Portugal was the 1st country to become nationwide interoperable using
a single, universal system to all tolls in the
country (95), now it’s 1st to become fully ETC interoperable...
Maurizio Rotondo - AISCAT
ReplyDeleteOur (toll industry) set of wheels has a well defined bias, towards the solution of internal issues, by means of internal means. The tolling industry has the capability to solve its internal issues and to build the proper interfaces among the operators; sometimes technology legacy matters prevent a quick solution, but in general almost everything is at least “feasible”.
Is this what the users want, though? Is this what society, Governments, other industries are aiming at? Here rotating the wheels may be useful, “to put ourselves in someone else wheels” I would say.
The debate on tolling interoperability has been going on for at least some 20 years now, in Europe it started in the late 1980's, and the result is a number of isolated systems, not actually designed to be interoperable although they may accommodate interoperability at some costs. The introduction of satellite based tolling did not help interoperability, it rather added one more “isolated” component to it.
As a result the European Authorities grew the opinion that the toll operators would not or could not achieve interoperability alone; a European-wide interoperability was imposed by law, by means of a pretty complicated and expensive On Board Unit, and the European toll operators will have to accept in the coming years to pass contracts with external entities that will do “interoperable toll collection” in their behalf; existing systems will have to be adapted in software and communication terms and a good part of the tolls will be collected by someone else. Basically the concept of separation between infrastructure and service has been enforced through the trojan horse of interoperability.
It is not clear yet how it will end up, but the European toll operators are frantically working with their Administration to comply with the law, in hurry and in a framework that could be better defined than it is.
It is difficult to say whether they could have done anything different, perhaps all this was unavoidable, but it is clear that the wheel set was too worn out on one side and the other side reacted on its own, changing the rules of the game and steering the blades in a different direction.
The Portuguese example, that I just red in the blog, seems to confirm this.
A conclusion may be “rotate your wheel set before someone else rotates it for you while you are running” because it may be difficult to adapt the course and to avoid obstacles.
Let me follow up at a more general level to Pat's query and Jack's posting.
ReplyDeleteFor us to rotate the wheels means taking a look at the problem from a different perspective. In the case of interoperability we have always made the assumption that the agency that collected the toll needed to provide the means of cllection and the interoperability to any other facilities that they could manage
What of we turned it around and asked what are the necessary requirements to allow 3'rd parties to provide interoperability? What would the agencies need to make available in the form of open standars and open protocols?
I don't have the answers, just the questions but at least it's from a rotated wheels perspective
The following are observations from Boston’s meeting and the excellent posts above mine. I see four fairly distinct interoperability (IOP) ‘camps’:
ReplyDeleteCamp 1 – IOP Determinists: These are people who never tire of telling the industry that we’ll be dependent on legacy systems for a “long, long time.” That may be true. The problem, however, is that they have been telling us this ever since the IOP debate began a decade ago. I believe their real objective is not to help us understand that breaking our dependence on proprietary technologies is difficult, but to make us think that it is impossible — so don’t bother.
Camp 2 – IOP Pessimists: These folks argue that it is already too late – we already invested in the technologies we have and there is no reason to think of what might be next. Besides, what is next is unknown is thus frightening. They may be right too, but their attitude betrays a lack of deference for the power of innovation and the undeniable direction and intermixing of consumer, technology, and political trends, which hang like storm clouds over this industry.
Camp 3 – IOP Champions: to these people, IOP is something simple or so easy as to require no deliberation. The value of open standards and platforms is obvious. Their beliefs are based on technical logic and/or actual experience within the toll industry or in other tech sectors. They support third party provision. They see no reason not to disassociate operating a road from that of managing tags and accounts. They see the storm clouds too and hope to stay ahead of them.
Camp 4 – IOP Realists. IBTTA leadership forms this camp. It is the organization, I believe, who has the role of laying industry’s big issues out on the table and finding ways to begin coping with them in a serious way. It is the pragmatist and balancer of competing (often passionate) views.
But I have concern about IBTTA’s role in reaching industry consensus on IOP, partly because IBTTA does not typically take firm views on things. And in this case, it tends to yield too much of the floor to the other camps, allowing an endless squabbling that leads nowhere. IBTTA supports interoperability in the abstract, but rather than standing behind the concept, I’d rather see IBTTA get out in front of it. The toll should be able to build from cases within its community and external to it and establish a set of concrete understandings about what the next steps should be. Without such an action plan, I see stagnation. Instead of staring mesmerized at the question like a spectator, what I want is more dynamic leadership (and it doesn’t have to come from the top).
Thanks for the opportunity to post.
Anonymous Comment from Member Interested in Networks (Part 1 of 2)
ReplyDelete(NOTE: The following comments on the Report of the IBTTA Interoperability Forum come from a member who wishes to remain anonymous.)
I was struck by how little discussion there was about networks. Everyone spoke colorfully and authoritatively about what they knew but little about networks. Everyone was speaking about the trees when it is, in fact, the forest of complex economic and political and technological forces that will determine the future of toll agencies.
Perhaps it would help to begin with defining the network and then you can start measuring the demand for inter-network interoperability. It was ironic that the cell phone industry was used as an example of interoperability. If this meeting had taken place with the network operators about providing access to their proprietary networks there would have been in attendance application developers, device manufacturers, etc. that provided the technical backbone of the industry.
Government intervention and regulation affected the cell phone industry. So why discount government policy in the toll industry. For example, mobile operators faced major entry barriers in the form of spectrum allocation policies. Some governments deliberately restricted the number of operators to extract higher revenues from bidders for operator licenses. Still other governments imposed complex auction rules intended to maximize competition.
A key regulatory issue was the price that users had to pay for interconnection with rival networks. A high interconnection price meant that, until a particular operator’s network was large enough, its users would face higher charges, thus limiting growth of the network and constituting a barrier to entry.
You cannot make policy in the toll industry without considering new technologies, new legislative arrangements, value pricing, etc. It is prudent to consider development outside your own ken.
What is the market size for customers travelling from the IAG properties to the Florida properties? Does anyone have data or evidence of the “demand” for interoperability? Who are the customers: Commercial, residential, recreational etc.? How does the North Carolina toll enterprise build value by providing interoperability with Sun Pass? Who appropriates the Value? Is it Value to the enterprise, the customer, the back office processing, the network, etc.?
Should the New Jersey Turnpike see the toll market as one big competitive unit? Is there competition between networks of interconnected enterprises? How do they analyze their role relative to the other enterprises in their network, in competing networks? Is each enterprise’s fate ultimately tied to the health of the network as a whole? What are the positive externalities of being a member of the network?
Are there increased efficiencies by being part of your network and interconnecting with other networks? Can you quantify these efficiencies? Is there strategic value to pursuing interoperability in the face of disruptive technologies? Network players are not homogeneous. They provide essentially the same service but are influenced by different political considerations. In certain circumstances, they provide subsidies to other transportation modes. How do you make the case for leveraging network effects on economies of scale on both the demand and supply side? Whether you are a real or virtual network, the value in connecting to a network depends on the number of other people already connected to it.
Anonymous Comment from Member Interested in Networks (Part 2 of 2)
ReplyDelete(NOTE: The following comments on the Report of the IBTTA Interoperability Forum come from a member who wishes to remain anonymous.)
Other things being equal, it’s better to be connected to a bigger network than a smaller one. How do you make this case to each individual toll provider and the IBTTA Board? Should IBTTA acquire the IAG?
I was impressed that the emergence of a disruptive technology as a prime mover in the industry was ignored. The rate of technological improvement over the last decade shows us that disruptive technologies shatter precious organization continuity.
To grasp the future of the transportation network of which the toll industry is only a part, you need a wider lens. What are the implications for IBTTA of the development of network-oriented technology? Networks have been transforming economies for a long time, why should the toll industry be any different? How ephemeral are the advantages enjoyed by Toll Agencies now?
In sum, before you take a leap toward a new strategy, the leap should be towards uniqueness and advantage. You have to resist the gravitational pull to be drawn into a “market” or a “segment” without quantifying the market size. You also have to size up changes in the external environment carefully before taking a leap. The worst strategic disasters involve management that did not grasp transformations in their markets. I believe the participants were too casual about the changes taking place in the external environment.
There are several issues I see with the successful implementation of interoperability; inter and intra state enforcement agreements, agency business rules, tolling technology and added value services, to name a few.
ReplyDeleteThese issues must first be clearly defined and go through their respective approvals, in order to have seamless and transparent interoperability, rather than hybrid and costly models that rely on increased back office operational costs. Toll agencies currently experience a significant leakage due to underperforming tolling systems (end to end) and “true” violators. There is also no standard formula for cost to collect calculations that allow for accurate apples to apples comparison of tolling systems and agency benchmarks. Hence, trying to address interoperability, while trying to patch system issues, lead to an increase of operational costs. In my perspective, current and future investments in tolling infrastructure should first start with examining all tolling systems. IBTTA should serve as the forum to do a technology testing of tolling platforms, in order to give an industry recommendation based on: total system performance (end to end/lane to back office), non-proprietary, scalability and flexibility, financial-grade security (at least 128-bit AES encryption at the transponder level and full system PCI compliance to the BOS) and added value services, such as e-Commerce and other commercial and safety applications, in order to differentiate the services on a user-fee base limited access highway.
Once a common platform is chosen based on the above mentioned criteria, then an organic migration plan should be implemented, in order to not interrupt an existing client base with older tolling technology, and for those that are about to start a new tolling service. When the leakage is plugged and a common platform is chosen, then the next level of interoperability discussions should start. Primarily, the merge of transaction base operations and financial reconciliation of said transactions. One way to achieve this is via a national clearing house via a 3rd party. That way, all agencies have equal interest and could also offer a reduce transaction fee. But there could also be other decentralized models that should be explored.
The most complex part of interoperability will probably be the ability for agencies to still retain the uniqueness of their business rules, yet having enough of a common factor to share a reciprocal process with other tolling agencies. In the end, the end-user or road customer doesn’t care what technology platform is there. They just want to be able to experience a safe and efficient driving environment, with other added value services, since they are paying for the “privilege” to ride that road. Folks, let’s first start with the basics; rules, policies and procedures, then sustainable technology implementation.