Texas Department of Transportation Selects TransCore's eGo Plus Wireless RFID...

even as our media tells us there are no plans to make most roads in texas toll roads...as metro hides hundreds of millions of dollars in the CAFR's and claims they have no money...

you'll pay about the equivalent if you were to double the price you pay for gas, up to 10 times in some areas...because they love the environment, it's for your health and safety we bring you this tyranny.

September 19, 2005 10:00 AM US Eastern Timezone
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Texas Department of Transportation Selects TransCore's eGo Plus Wireless RFID Communications Technology for Use In New Area Tolling Projects; TxTag Will Expand Interoperability Throughout the State

HARRISBURG, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 19, 2005--The Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) selects TransCore's eGo(R) Plus radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for use in the area's Central Texas Turnpike Program, a $2 billion transportation initiative. The multimillion-dollar contract allows for the initial release of 500,000 eGo Plus tags, branded locally as TxTag, with a total of 2 million tags over two years.


The Central Texas Turnpike Program was designed to increase mobility by adding capacity and reducing congestion in the region. The Texas Transportation Institute's 2005 Urban Mobility Report singled out electronic toll collection as one of several key tools for reducing congestion. Incorporating toll roads is gaining support nationally because it provides a means to build roads more rapidly than possible with traditional funding, particularly because it allows roads to operate according to the rules of consumer choice.

According to the report, over the last 10 years in 85 major U.S. urban areas, the annual delay increased almost 20 percent. During peak travel times, the figure is closer to 40 percent, and the cost of these delays is well over $60 billion, up 60 percent.

"At a time nationally when there is a real need to come to grips with congestion, TXDOT is taking major strides to increase volume while improving efficiency of the state's transportation infrastructure," said John Worthington, TransCore president.

As the network of toll roads grows in Texas, interoperability of the tags used for wireless payment is essential for motorists who want to use one tag in many parts of the state. The particularly appealing benefit of TXDOT's selection of the eGo technology, along with the paper-thin, lower cost design, is the interoperability (or multiprotocol) feature that allows motorists to use the wireless payment feature on toll roads throughout Texas. In Houston and Dallas interoperability between tolling systems has been available since November of 2003, allowing nearly two million TollTag and EZTag users the convenience of wireless payment on four major toll roads in both cities.

Texas joins other authorities such as the Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority; Puerto Rico's Highway and Transportation Authority; Shenzhen Customs in Shenzhen, China; the Washington State Department of Transportation; and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency in choosing the landmark design capabilities of the eGo RFID technology for large-scale applications. More than one million eGo tags are already in active service worldwide.

About eGo(R) Plus Technology

The paper-thin eGo Plus tag, priced under $10, a significant cost savings compared to many of the current hard case battery tags that typically sell for $25 to $30, is similar in size to a vehicle inspection sticker and mounts easily on a motorist's windshield.

The eGo Plus sticker tag is a 915 MHz radio frequency programmable, beam-powered, windshield-mounted tag. Packaged as a flexible sticker, this tag is ideal for applications that require low-cost, easily installed tags and is appropriate for electronic toll collection, airport access and ground transportation management systems, parking access, and security access. The tag supports multiple protocols, making it easy to migrate from a mixed-tag population to a common tag.

The eGo Plus, non-battery sticker tag offers a read range of up to 31.5 feet (9.6 meters) and 2048-bit read/write memory at a fraction of the cost of older, less flexible RFID technology. The tag provides the capability to read, write, rewrite, or permanently lock individual bytes. Custom printing and labeling is also available.

Each eGo Plus sticker tag comes equipped with a factory-programmed unique tag identification number that prevents the tag from being duplicated. The eGo Plus sticker tag is read by TransCore's family of readers, which are configurable to support a protocol compliant with ANSI INCITS 256-2001 and ISO 10374 standards, and the ATA Standard for automatic equipment identification.

About TransCore

TransCore, a transportation services company with 1,800 employees and 80 locations, is a unit of Roper Industries, a $1.4 billion diversified industrial technology company. With installations in 41 countries, more than 100 patents and pioneering applications of RFID, GPS and satellite communications technologies, TransCore's technical expertise is unparalleled in the markets it serves. TransCore's 60-year heritage spans the development of RFID transportation applications at Los Alamos National Labs to implementation of the nation's first electronic toll system to establishing North America's first freight matching network.

TransCore's extensive global experience with tolling systems includes more than 6,200 installed electronic toll collection lanes worldwide and 22 customer service centers. TransCore offers an extensive suite of enterprise software applications, business process outsourcing, system integration, and maintenance services to provide complete solutions, configurable to customers' requirements.

For more information, visit www.transcore.com.