TxTag rollout begins.
Toll tags, if not roads, debut today
Transportation agency plans 'soft rollout' so it can work out the kinks in electronic toll cards.
April 16, 2006
By Ben Wear
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2006
Starting Monday, the Texas Department of Transportation will be selling tickets to a play still in rehearsal.
The agency, using the Web, will have a "soft rollout" of the TxTag, wallet-size cards with the electric gizmos inside that talk to toll plazas.
The site, www.txtag.org, will have links showing you how to get a tag (for free) and set up an account with money in it, along with other information about how the cards work.
With one on your windshield, you can whiz on past an overhead toll reader at highway speed, and the equipment will dun your prepaid account for the toll. Without one, you'll have to stop at a booth and pay cash.
Of course, with or without a tag, you won't be able to do any of this in Central Texas for at least a few more months. The area has four toll roads under construction, and officials are still being cagey about when the first one — or section of one — will open.
The hard rollout of the TxTag, complete with a marketing blitz, will come in a few months.
For now, the state Transportation Department, which is handling tags and the technology for the first time, wants to have at least a few of you out there with TxTags driving in Houston and Dallas, where they already have toll roads and their own tags. That way, the agency can make sure its technology works smoothly with the Dallas and Houston toll equipment. The term of art is "interoperability."
And David Powell, the turnpike division's information technology director, said some Central Texans have already been asking for tags to use on existing toll roads.
Go figure.
bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698
© 2006 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com
Transportation agency plans 'soft rollout' so it can work out the kinks in electronic toll cards.
April 16, 2006
By Ben Wear
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2006
Starting Monday, the Texas Department of Transportation will be selling tickets to a play still in rehearsal.
The agency, using the Web, will have a "soft rollout" of the TxTag, wallet-size cards with the electric gizmos inside that talk to toll plazas.
The site, www.txtag.org, will have links showing you how to get a tag (for free) and set up an account with money in it, along with other information about how the cards work.
With one on your windshield, you can whiz on past an overhead toll reader at highway speed, and the equipment will dun your prepaid account for the toll. Without one, you'll have to stop at a booth and pay cash.
Of course, with or without a tag, you won't be able to do any of this in Central Texas for at least a few more months. The area has four toll roads under construction, and officials are still being cagey about when the first one — or section of one — will open.
The hard rollout of the TxTag, complete with a marketing blitz, will come in a few months.
For now, the state Transportation Department, which is handling tags and the technology for the first time, wants to have at least a few of you out there with TxTags driving in Houston and Dallas, where they already have toll roads and their own tags. That way, the agency can make sure its technology works smoothly with the Dallas and Houston toll equipment. The term of art is "interoperability."
And David Powell, the turnpike division's information technology director, said some Central Texans have already been asking for tags to use on existing toll roads.
Go figure.
bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698
© 2006 Austin American-Statesman:
posted by Porkus Maximus Tex: at Sunday, April 16, 2006
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