Company Profile

Summary of Qualifications and Experience

Tolltex, Inc., is a New Jersey company formed during January, 1994 to meet the system integration needs of the toll industry. Since that time, Tolltex personnel have completed projects in Malaysia, Houston Texas, Alaska, India,Tampa, Miami and Orlando Florida. Tolltex also provided consulting support to TRIP II as part of the Greenway project located in Leesburg, VA.

 

Additionally, the company's supporting staff have completed work on toll projects on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, New Jersey Garden State Parkway, New York State Thruway, Orlando Orange County Expressway, Illinois Tollway, and Denver E/470.

Software development lab

For the above referenced projects, Tolltex has fabricated lane controller equipment, designed and programmed lane software, plaza software, host software, AVI tag store software, fabricated in-lane equipment, and provided technical consulting support.
Lane controller work has included support for:


Host, plaza, and tag store work experience includes the design and programming of a client server system utilizing an Oracle relational data base. Supporting work included:

Return to Top of Page

Summary of Projects

The following is a summary of the major projects in which Tolltex personnel have been involved.  

Kharagpur India - During June 2004, Tolltex successfully commissioned a 10-lane system in Kharagpur, India, which is located approximately 3 hours South of Kolkata. The system was part of 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.

This system features touch screen terminals, lane controllers, receipt printers, a Local Area Network, a complete revenue audit system, and a moneyroom sub-system.

Pre-Paid Account Software- During July 2004, Tolltex successfully added pre-paid account software to the previous system we delivered to the State of Alaska. This software sub-system allows accounts to be established for commercial accounts such as bus and trucking companies. These accounts allow pre-paid trips to be purchased in advance. Drivers present ID cards to collectors in the lanes to use the accounts.

Touch Screen System- During 2002, Tolltex implemented a new toll system based on touch screen technology and bar coded coupons/passes. This new system replaced the original system provided to Alaska for the Whitter tunnel. Additional vehicle classes and new methods of payment including discounted coupons, seasonal passes, and personal checks required a new collector interface to be developed. The original system was based on stainless steel terminals. The enhanced system used rugged touch screens as the collector's interface.

The introduction of discounted coupons and seasonal passes resulted in the development of a complete bar code management system. This system tracked all coupons and seasonal passes from the time they were ordered from the printer, to the point in which the coupons were used. Software validated each book or seasonal pass sold and each coupon/pass presented for payment. Individual bar codes on each coupon tracked and managed the status of each coupon. An expiration date was used to manage the use of seasonal passes.

The previous system was operating for two years. To implement this major enhancement required special software to be developed to reformat each previous transaction to be reformatted to the new database format. The previous toll schedule and the method in which it was managed also had to be completely redesigned.

Florida Department of Transportation - During the third-quarter of 2002, Tolltex was contracted by the State of Florida to develop a new method of managing all lane controller software used throughout the State's 1,100 lane system. This project included automating the methods used to install operating system software, network software, and application software. Previously, all software was managed and installed manually. The new method is based on having software managed on on central server and transferred to various other servers located throughout the state. Tolltex-developed application software allows staff to download software from any of the servers onto any lane in the system. Version level checking and CRC validation were included to verify that the correct version was downloaded and that the download transfer was complete. Distribution of the software from the various servers to individual lanes was implement by using the State's wide area TCP/IP Ethernet network. A full Windows NT graphic user interface was developed to allow staff to operate this new sub-system.

Whittier Toll System - During 2000, Tolltex developed and commissioned a toll collection system as part of the Whittier Access Tunnel in Alaska. This system features traditional manual toll collection equipment manufactured by Tolltex including toll terminals, receipt printers, RoadMate embedded controllers, lane controllers, island traffic signals and a host system. The scope of this project also included training toll collectors and host system users. The in-lane equipment was connected to the lane controller which in-turn was connected to the plaza/host system via a 100BaseT local area network. All messages were sent in real time via TCP/IP socket messages. Data was stored in a relational database management system and all screens and reports featured a point and click user interface.

Automatic Vehicle Classification System - During January, 1999, Tolltex was contracted to develop a custom processor designed to process signals as part of an Automatic Vehicle Classification system in Malaysia. The result of this project was the Tolltex RoadMate embedded processor. The signals included loops, treadle strips, and a vehicle height detector (through-beam sensor). Classification included the detection and reporting of dual tires and there was a requirement to report the presence of motor cycles and 3-wheel vehicles (motorcycle with sidecar). The RoadMate processed the sensor data and sent a vehicle classification message to the client's existing lane controllers via a serial RS-232 communication link.

New Jersey Garden State Parkway - Tolltex was selected to provide Island Traffic Signals as part of a refurbishment of the Barnegat main line toll plaza. The Parkway is owned and operated by the New Jersey Highway Authority (NJHA). Tolltex also provided and participated in the installation of a Traffic 2000 piezo treadle at the Bergen main line plaza as part of a test being conducted by the NJHA. The treadle is interfaced with the Parkway's lane controller.

Florida Department of Transportation, SunPass - Subcontractor to Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) responsible for the conversion of existing lane controller software previously supplied by Cubic Toll Systems. The conversion from the DOS operating system to the real-time QNX UNIX operating system supports the introduction of ETC into existing manual lanes which will result in a mixed-mode of toll collection. These lane controllers are networked to FDOT's DEC VAX-based plaza computers by TCP/IP Ethernet. Initial programming is complete and currently the system is under test at the FDOT project office located in Boca Raton Florida. The first lane was tested at an actual plaza during the first week of April, 1997. ETC has since been added.

Additionally, Tolltex was a subcontractor to Amtech who was awarded the contract of supplying ETC equipment as well as lane controllers to be used in dedicated ETC lanes as well as free-flow express ETC lanes. In this role, Tolltex is providing technical as well as programming support to Amtech to assist them with delivering the Dedicated and Express lane controllers for the FDOT SunPass project.

Tolltex was also awarded a contract by FDOT for the supply of equipment needed to support the SunPass project. This equipment includes touch screen terminals, serial communication multiplexers, treadles, loop detectors, digital I/O boards, racks, opto relays, power supplies, flash memory cards, and three hundred fifty Pentium CPUs to upgrade existing systems, as well as two hundred complete Pentium-based rack mount and NEMA 4 lane controllers. The first phase of this project is complete and was delivered during October 1997. Tolltex has currently delivered 350 lane controllers, two hundred Pentium upgrades for existing FDOT systems, Traffic 2000 treadles, flash memory modules, loop detectors, and two hundred and fifty five serial multiplexers.

Harris County Toll Road Authority - Tolltex selected as prime contractor for the fabrication and supply of one hundred fifty five industrial quality receipt printers as part of the authority's toll road expansion project.

During the summer of 1998, Tolltex was asked to provided eighteen additional receipt printers to support the expansion of the Harris County Toll Road.

Florida Department of Transportation, Tampa and Miami - Tolltex completed a 1.5 year project which included sixty lanes of automatic coin machines (ACM) for installation in Tampa and Miami, Florida. For this project, Tolltex provided equipment, performed the software design, programming, documentation, training, integration training and on-site installation support. These lanes needed to interface with two different types of plaza computers currently in use by FDOT. Tolltex is currently providing technical support to FDOT for this project as well as stocking spare parts. Additional lanes of ACM equipment and lane controllers were delivered during 1997.

Florida Department of Transportation, Orlando - Tolltex delivered thirty-nine lanes of violation enforcement equipment as a sub-contractor for the Orlando Orange County Expressway. For the newly constructed FDOT Southern Connector toll road project, Tolltex programmed, assembled and delivered seven lanes of automatic coin machines, lane controllers and island traffic signals and associated spare parts.

Florida Department of Transportation, Tampa - Tolltex designed, manufactured and delivered automatic gate controllers for use in mixed-mode lanes as part of the FDOT toll collection system. Each PLC based controller receives a fare paid signal from either a manual lane terminal or a laser bar-code reader. In turn, the controller raises the gate and lowers it when the vehicle clears the lane. A switch allows the collector to override the gate, or lock it in the open position. The use of PLC logic has improved the operation and reliability over that of the previous system while guarding against inadvertent gate closures. Additional outputs for operation of an Island Traffic Signal were provided but not used in this application.

Return to Top of Page

Capabilities

Software development

Tolltex has experience in designing, programming, fabricating, assembling, documenting and commissioning real-time process sub-systems and transaction processing host systems needed to support the toll and transportation industries.

This experience is backed-up by a knowledgeable staff equipped with the necessary development tools needed to perform such work. The primary programming language used is "C", and database capabilities are supported by the Oracle Developer 2000 tool set, as well as Sybase SQL Anywhere, embedded SQL and ODBC. Development systems used in-house are Macintosh and PC based and utilize the QNX (real-time UNIX), Windows NT 2000 operating systems. These multiple platforms are linked with each other using standard TCP/IP protocols. Software packages used for development, programming and support include: The Oracle Developer 2000 system is based on a client server configuration implemented via TCP/IP Ethernet. Tolltex retains a maintenance agreement with Oracle for support and to receive current updates to the Oracle products. Sybase SQL Anywhere is a cross platform database server which runs under QNX. The server can be accessed via the native QNX network or across a TPCIP network. Access from cross platform systems is handled through the use the TCP/IP link and ODBC calls.

Tolltex has the capability of delivering real-time sensor-based systems to the toll and transportation industries. The project work completed can be applied to both toll collection projects as well as advanced traffic management and access control systems. Knowledge of various mechanical and electronic sensors, as well as the programming expertise needed to optimize the accuracy of these sensors are capabilities which Tolltex has gained through development, research, and real world experience.

 

 Return to Top of Page

Facilities

Tolltex, Inc.

Tolltex has established operations in two facilities located in Northern New Jersey. The Lafayette office is a 1,000 square foot facility used for administrative purposes. The Sparta office is a 5,000 square foot facility divided into a lab/project development office and an assembly/warehouse area with loading dock access.

Groupt of ACMs in assembly area

This image shows the Tolltex assembly area with a group Mitsubishi coin machines that were delivered to Florida. For this project, Tolltex performed project management, built and supplied QNX-based lane controllers, prepared training material and conducted collector and maintenance training, documentation, supplied on-site start-up assistance and provided follow-up warranty support.

Get a hardcopy version of this page by downloading profile.pdf (683K).

Or

Download a text-only summary version tolltex_company_information.pdf (15K)


You will need Adobe Reader to view the files.
Get Acrobat Reader

© 2001 Tolltex, Inc.