During June 2004, Tolltex commissioned our TollTrax toll collection system at the Kharagpur toll plaza located south of Kolkata on the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) newly constructed NH-6 toll road. Civil work for the project including construction of the roadway, plaza building, and toll booth area was performed by Hindustan Construction Co. Ltd., of Mumbai (HCC). Installation work was performed by Metro Road Systems Pvt. Ltd. of New Delhi (MITS) who is also responsible for providing system maintenance and ongoing user training and operations support.

TollTrax offers an effective solution to operating, managing, and auditing a toll collection facility.

The Kharagpur system supports a 10-lane toll plaza complete with lane controllers, touch screen toll terminals, receipt printers, vehicle detectors, island traffic signals, canopy traffic signals, barriers, a local area network, plaza computer, workstation computer, laser printers, as well as a complete revenue audit management system.

At Kharagpur currently four (4) classes of vehicles are used. Each has up to seven (7) types of payments. The system allows another 3 classes of vehicle to be added by simply changing the toll schedule from the plaza.

Lane Controllers - At Kharagpur, the lane controllers are installed in the tunnel leading under each toll booth. The configuration provided was the Tolltex NEMA-4 lane controller featuring a sealed and lockable housing that is bolted to the wall of the tunnel offering a secure system.

Connections to the in-lane and in-booth equipment are made by routing cabling in conduit leading from the lane controller cabinet.

A 24-port 100BaseT Ethernet hub was also provided to connect the lane controllers to the Plaza Computer System (PCS) located in the plaza building adjacent to the toll lanes.

Toll Terminals - Toll booth operators use touch screen terminals to classify vehicles, sell special discounted multi-use tickets, record payments, process non-revenue vehicles, deal with unusual occurrences, and accept pre-paid tickets as payment of tolls.

Recipt printers are provided to produce receipts for single-use fare as well as to generate the multi-use discounted tickets that are sold in each booth.

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The screen is organized with the vehicle classes placed on the left side. Payment methods such as cash, non-revenue, and use of a pre-paid ticket to pay the toll are in the center area. Control functions such as printing receipts, selling tickets, processing No-Fund and Unusual Occurrence transactions, automatic barrier gate control, canopy signal control, cancel, and lane Open/Close are located on the right side of the screen.

The black window located on the top left side of the screen displays message to the operator about the transaction processed. The current Date/Time and the ID number of the collector using the lane are displayed in the small upper window located towards the center of the screen. Finally, the toll amount due in Rupees is displayed in the second small window near the center of the screen. The time is kept current to the second.

Touching a target causes the color of the target to change from Gray to Green. This provides visual feedback to the toll operator regarding which target was touched. If an incorrect target is touched, the "Cancel" target allows the entry to be canceled. Touching the proper target will automatically correct the entry.

On the sample touch screen shown above, the touch targets for classes E, F, and G show as "dimmed". That's because the current toll schedule for the Kharagpur plaza only has four (4) different vehicle classes. Therefore, to eliminate errors, touching Class E, F, or G is ignored since those classes aren't currently used. If it becomes necessary to add more classes, those targets can be made active by simply updating the toll schedule on the plaza computer system by adding toll rates for those values. This is a powerful feature that places more control in the hands of the toll facility operator and management staffs.

Other touch screens allow the toll booth operator to enter their userid/password, sell discounted tickets, accept previously sold pre-paid tickets as payment of the toll, process non-revenue transactions (i.e., government vehicles exempt from paying the toll), processing no-fund transactions, as well as unusual occurrences. Each screen is designed to be easy for the toll operators to understand and use. The screen shown below is used to process pre-paid tickets as payment of the toll amount due.

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Like the unused classes E, F, and G class targets, two of the targets on this screen are dimmed. That's because in this example, the vehicle class is "A". Therefore, according to the Kharagpur toll schedule, tickets purchased for "Monthly School Buses" and "Local Transport Units" do not apply to a Class A vehicle which is a Car, Jeep, or Motorcycle. The two dimmed targets eliminate operator error since they dynamically become inactive when a ticket for a Class A vehicle is presented as payment of the toll.

Also note that the "Monthly Pass" target is GREEN. That illustrates the feedback given to the toll booth operator when a target is touched. The "Cancel" target allows the selection of a ticket to be canceled in cases when the toll operator mistakenly touch the "Toll Paid with Valid Ticket" target on the main classification screen.

Receipt (Ticket) Printers - Each toll booth has a printer that is used to produce single use receipts and/or multi-use pre-paid tickets. TollTrax was designed to print on pre-printed rolls of NHAI paper. However, the system is capable of printing on plain paper including logos of the facility.

Rolls of paper are easily installed by simply using the latch to open the hinged top whereby the roll is placed inside the printer. Printer status is montiored and displayed in real time from the plaza computer.

Plaza Computer System (PCS) - Toll facilities using TollTrax can collect tolls via cash, credit card, checks, discounted tickets, bar-coded coupon books, seasonal passes, and pre-paid trip accounts. Support for authorized non-revenue users is also included. All of these features are managed from the Plaza Computer System (PCS). For the Kharagpur system, only cash and discounted tickets are used. However, the system is designed to support other methods of payment if necessary.

The plaza building at the Kharagpur toll plaza offers a clear view of all activity in the lanes from the supervisors' glassed work area.

Equipment located in the plaza building includes a server-class PC and a workstation. Both are connected to the lanes by a 100BaseT local area network (LAN).

The server manages all data, produces the audit reports, and provides the real-time monitoring and controll of the lanes. The workstation is used to support the money room operations by tracking and managing the cash drawers used by each toll booth operator.

Two laser printers are provided to generate reports.

The real time monitoring feature of TollTrax shown below extends the view from plaza building by allowing supervisors to immediately see the class of each vehicle processed in the lane.

The detail monitor screen displays data in real time for each lane. The data includes counts for each vehicle class for cash, non-revenue, no-funds, tickets, violations as well as a final total.

A complete set of audit reports allows all revenue collected to be managed and accounted for according to each toll operator who works the lanes. This audit extends down to the individual cash drawers used by the operators to collect the tolls.

The screen shown below is used to establish and manage toll schedules used by TollTrax. This feature is part of the PCS.

The design of the toll schedule screen lists each different payment for each class of vehicle. The leftmost column labeled "Single Use Fare Paid" applies to vehicles that are simply paying the toll for a single passage. The other columns relate to the various types of discounted tickets that are sold in the booths by the toll booth operators.

Note that classes E, F, and G contain zeros in the amount fields. That's because those classes aren't currently used. To put those classes into service, it is only necessary for a user authorized to access this screen to enter the appropriate values, as well as setting the Effective Date and Time when the change will be put into operation and then click on "Save". Doing so automatically activates those classes throughout the entire system (including the touch terminal as previously mentioned).

The Effective Date and Time fields allow new toll schedules to be setup in advance. When the Date/Time is reached, the toll schedule will automatically be put into operation in all lanes at the same second. Note the "pop-up" calendar next to the Effective Date input entry field. To eliminate typing errors, any screen within the system that uses dates has a pop-up calendar to set the date. On this screen there is a similar pop-up for the Effective Time.

The material presented here is a brief overview of the system. There is much more to TollTrax which makes the system an effective solution to operating, managing, and auditing a toll collection facility.