Transportation Officials Set to Choose Bridge Toll Operator

Are you ready to start paying to cross the Ohio River between Louisville and Southern Indiana?

The $2.3B Ohio River Bridges Project will result in tolls for drivers crossing the Kennedy Bridge – which will be turned into a southbound-only route, the new downtown bridge next to the Kennedy, and a new upriver Prospect bridge that connects with Utica, Indiana.  Drivers won’t start paying tolls until 2016, but transportation officials are ready to choose a toll operator this week to begin implementing the new system.

Rather than manned tollbooths, the automated system will use in-car transponders to pay tolls from a pre-paid toll account.  Cameras with license plate recognition will be used to mail toll bills to drivers without an account.

The six finalists managing the toll operations include the 3M Company, Portuguese-based Brisa Inovacao e Tecnologia, S.A., Austrian Kapsch TrafficCom IVHS Inc. – which was selected earlier this year to provide transponders for the toll system, French Sanef Operations America Inc., TransCore LP of Nashville, and Xerox State & Local Solutions, Inc.

The result of this selection process would be a move toward  final selection of the operator, who would oversee camera installation, violation processing and managing the toll-operations center.  The recommended operator would then need to be approved by the Indiana Finance Authority.