Californian toll authorities are beginning to use the latest video camera technology, to ensure that automated violation enforcement is both accurate and fair. Such an enforcement system is now being used at the Interstate 80 toll plaza at Carquinez Bridge in the San Francisco Bay area. This is the first California bridge toll plaza to be retrofitted with ATCAS (Advanced Toll Collection and Accounting System). This electronic toll collection (ETC) system has been operating since August 1997, and has already been very successful. Eight other California toll plazas are scheduled to be retrofitted with ATCAS: six in the San Francisco Bay area, one in Los Angeles, and one in San Diego. The Lane Controller subsystem of ATCAS controls its other subsystems: (1) automatic vehicle identification (AV); (2) automatic vehicle classification (AVC); and (3) violation detection system (VDS). It is essential that the VDS be very accurate and reliable, because ATCAS monitors mixed-mode as well as dedicated 'automatic' lanes, so that unwise drivers are always tempted to violate. The VDS includes high-performance cameras, lighting fixtures, light sensors, and image-processing computers. After a violation is detected, the data are fed to the VDS computers for optical character recognition (OCR) analysis.
Abstract