GeoToll built a tolling solution called “Enhanced-GPS,” a technology which improves upon the smartphone’s location functionality to increase location-accuracy at a toll point. E-GPS, alongside other proprietary GeoToll technologies, provides highly spacially-accurate (accuracy at the “lane-level”) and precise millisecond timing to identify a particular vehicle passing through any virtual gantry (a software-defined location), which can be an existing toll point or new one). E-GPS is what separates GeoToll from all other smartphone toll payment providers, companies which rely on the vehicle’s license plate number to do what is called ‘pay-by-plate’ tolling.
GeoToll has been tested thoroughly. The company has conducted 8 pilots. All test plans were authored directly, or approved by, the toll agency – not GeoToll. E-GPS has consistently proven to be 99.999% accurate. Even in challenging toll environments such as paint-separated and elevated express lanes – which was the scenario at LA County Metro – GeoToll worked! LA Metro staff concluded that GeoToll tech can replace transponders and reader infrastructure, especially where new express lanes are being planned.
GeoToll is the cheapest toll solution, from both the capital and operating sense. It is less costly to deploy because: 1) it removes the need for heavy gantries as required by traditional RFID-tag based toll systems, and; 2) people use their own device – the smartphone – instead of a toll tag. It is cheaper operationally, because it can greatly reduce the use of pay-by-plate tolling and all it’s expensive processes: manual license plate review, mailing invoices, return-to-sender issues, payment processing, second notices and the cost of assigning unpaid accounts to collections. Because it is based on the smartphone, GeoToll can also do things for customers that a tag cannot, such as deliver messages, alerts and even discounts to explicit customers, depending on where they are and what direction they are driving. For agencies with HOT or Express Lanes, GeoToll allows car-poolers to split the cost of the toll, and can be used by drivers for HOV declaration.
One of the most exciting potential cost savings relates to the concept of toll leakage – money that is simply lost by the agency. GeoToll E-GPS helps agencies identify transactions not recorded by legacy toll plaza hardware. In all pilots, GeoToll recorded approximately 3-4% more ‘transaction events’ than the facility’s existing AVI equipment. We call this audit and check functionality “Fail-Safe Tolling.” With it, GeoToll informs agencies where malfunctioning equipment is, so it can be identified and be repaired. With GeoToll’s Fail-Safe Tolling” feature, agencies are always in the know.