SR 520 bridge toll collection system, originally uploaded by WSDOT.
Wednesday night — depending on how crazy this snow thing gets — the infrastructure of a big change for transit in the Seattle area is scheduled to continue being put in place on the 520 bridge. This picture is from WSDOT’s gallery of images from the installation of the electronic tolling equipment going into place for a springtime launch of a new fee system that will charge drivers every time they cross Lake Washington.
Wednesday, Feb. 23 – All lanes of westbound SR 520 from 92nd Avenue NE to Montlake Blvd. will close for electrical work. The first lane will close at 11 p.m. and the second lane will close at 11:59 p.m. The first lane will open at 4:30 a.m. All lanes will reopen by 5 a.m.
Seattle Times reports that 520 will be the first bridge in the nation to raise money through tolls to pay for its replacement:
Sometime in April, this will become the first bridge in the nation to be tolled to raise money for its replacement, said Janet Matkin, toll communications manager for the DOT. Tolls would raise about $1 billion toward a $4.6 billion, six-lane replacement bridge.
Tolls will fluctuate by time of day between zero and $3.50 each direction, if state lawmakers ratify the plan soon.
While there’s no official start date for the new payment system yet, the state’s provider for the ‘Good to Go’ pass system drivers will use to pay for their tolls in advance is offering an incentive to sign up for the system before April 15.
$10 in Free SR 520 Tolls When You Purchase a Good To Go! Pass
The Offer:
Purchase and activate a Good To Go! Pass by April 15, 2011 and receive $10 in free tolls for the SR 520 Bridge.
How it Works:
Purchase a Good To Go! Pass online, at participating Safeway stores, over the phone at 1-866-936-8246, or at a walk-in or mobile customer service center by April 15, 2011. Good To Go!
Pass by April 15, 2011, and pre-load your account with the $30 minimum balance and receive $10 in free tolls on SR 520 credited toward your account.
You may receive $10 in free tolls per Pass, up to six Passes, applied toward one account.
There’s also a public information session slated for March 14th at SCCC. For more on the replacement project, keep track of our neighbors down in Montlake’s community site for a roster of announcements.
In a brief Twitter conversation, I recently learned that WSDOT will keep records of bridge crossings for three years. They stopped talking to me after I asked them to cite the law they say requires them to retain those records.
In response to an offer I received in a February 18 e-mail from WSDOT, I posed the following questions to Broch Bender at WSDOT:
1. What is WSDOT’s data retention policy for information about Good to Go passes and license plates scanned on the SR 520 bridge?
2. Is the license plate of every vehicle which crosses the SR 520 bridge photographed (i.e., is a digital image captured)? If not, which ones are?
3. After optical character recognition (OCR) is performed to recognize license plates, is the image from which the characters are recognized (i.e., the whole picture with the plate, the rest of the vehicle, etc.) stored?
4. What is the manufacturer and model of WSDOT’s automated license plate recognition (ALPR) equipment used to identify vehicles on the SR 520 bridge?
5. What is the manufacturer and model of WSDOT’s radio frequency identification (RFID) equipment used to identify vehicles on the SR 520 bridge?
6. In what manner has WSDOT announced to the public that a record of their travel on the SR 520 bridge will be created and retained?
7. What protections are in place for the database of travel information collected by WSDOT’s RFID and ALPR readers?
8. Does WSDOT collect information about when and where people travel at points other than the SR 520 bridge entrances?
9. Under what circumstances will WSDOT share information collected via RFID and ALPR scanners with outside parties?
On February 18, Mr. Bender replied, stating that he did not know the answers, but had referred my questions to Janet Matkin at at WSDOT’ss SR 520 Good to Go! Tolling office. When I receive answers, I’ll post them here and on my blog.
Thanks, Phil, for your continuing campaign against encroaching Big Brotherhood. I’d imagine it ain’t easy to keep up your energy in these tilting-at-windmills battles, but you should know that you have lots of boosters out here in Cyberland. Please keep the CHS blog updated on your WSDOT efforts. Danke.
Carpools won’t get a break, but you might be able to lessen the insanely high toll but sharing the expense with others via the new http://go520.avego.com/st-pilot/ ride-sharing pilot. It’s a state-funded pilot that seems to have some potential. If you sign-up as a driver, there are a lot of hoops and information sharing (insurance, ss#, etc.) but I understand there are precautions and whatnot.
How much is your time worth? I can tell you the amount the toll will cost will be money well spent if it can cut the amount of time it takes me to get over that bridge during rush hour times. Cap Hill to Redmond should not be taking me 1/2 hour east in the morning and 45min? 1hour? 1hour 15min? in the evening. The commute in isn’t so bad. It’s the one going west in the evening. If all the cheapskates decide to take 90, perhaps (and yes, I realize this might be a pipe dream) traffic will ease.
I am 100% behind Phil’s campaign to keep WADOT honest. I’m ok with the toll but really angry over the fact that they refuse to provide the public with real and substantive information cocnerning the iformation collected. Thank you Phil.
BTW, I plan on carpooling and taking the bus as much as possible…
Thanks, TT. FYI, someone left the following comment in response to my “Transit agencies should be honest about ORCA card data” blog post:
“The ORCA privacy policy actually used to say that the data was stored in encrypted form on the card. When we pointed out that it was in the clear, they quietly changed the statement to say “stored in unencrypted form.” I think Farebot caused them to clarify this further.
“To their credit, they no longer provide a web interface for employers to view your data. Originally they were planning on letting employers download huge reports with all their cards’ activities, but apparently now employers have to make a written request for data on a specific card.”FareBot is an Android application that allows some smartphones to read the travel data stored on an ORCA (or Clipper) card.
ORCA’s privacy statement, last revised February 14, 2011, includes the following:
“What electronic information can be “read” from an ORCA card?
“An ORCA Card’s microchip contains electronic information that does NOT include names but could include data in such fields as the type of card, Business Account ID number (if issued to an employer or other institution), the passenger type expiration date or date of birth (if present), fare products loaded onto the card including E-purse value and passes, the history of the prior ten (10) trip transactions (time, date, route and fare when the card was used) and the history of the prior five (5) revalue transactions (See Sec. 8.2). In order to keep the processing time to several milliseconds when an ORCA Card is tapped, the information on the card is generally not encrypted. However, date of birth or passenger type expiration date, if present, is encrypted.
“The electronic information on the card can be read by ORCA reader devices. Anyone with physical possession of a card, whether or not he or she is the rightful owner, can use the card until it is empty or blocked, as well as read some of the electronic data at an ORCA service location. It is also possible that an ORCA Card’s unencrypted data could be electronically “read” by a non-ORCA device if the card uses the same frequency and were to come within the range of the reader device. However, the unencrypted data which is not in plain text would require interpretation.”
I filed a public records request for all published revisions of that privacy statement.
…and that has nothing to do with this post. Sorry, wrong RFID.
Your comments have little to do with the post as well.
The Good to Go website is a great example of a simple idea poorly executed. Different state systems are not integrated, so something like automobile information, information already available from the state licensing agency, has to be reentered. I know it seems like this is a seperation for our protection, but that same information will be used if you do not have an account to identify the vehicle owner so they can be mailed a bill. In other words, the information is available, but not integrated across systems.
In addition, the web site offers no assurances of information protection, so all of the information that would be needed for identity theft is present. Compound this with numerous bugs on the web site and you have the significant potential for sensative, private information, leaking into the hands of the wrong people.
Shame on the state for allowing this risk to its tax payers and shame on the project managers for moving forward with this before it was ready. You should be held personally accountable for any finacial damages incurred.