Automated toll enforcement financial and policy considerations - the Dulles Toll Road case

There is increasing interest in automated enforcement of highway and bridge tolls. Automated photo-based toll enforcement systems, known as violation enforcement systems (VES), are increasingly common. This study provides an institutional policy analysis of the benefit-cost trade-offs in the financial and technical issues that affect decisions to deploy VES. A financial model of the automated enforcement problem is developed and deployment options, including privatization, are evaluated using Virginia's Dulles Toll Road (DTR) as a case study. The Conclusions include a number of policy recommendations such as violation charges, where violations enforcement efforts should be focused, and deployment issues. It is shown that for the DTR assuming: (a) the current violations rate of 1.5%, (b) a discard rate of 30% of violations, and ( c) a final collections yield rate of 70%, it is expected that net revenue could be about $300,000 per month, just in the seven express lanes. (A)