Daily News Briefs, October 11, 2021

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A Third NYSBA Bridge Will Go Cashless Early Next Month

HudsonValley360.com reports, Chris Steber, public information officer for the New York State Bridge Authority (NYSBA), said cashless tolling will start in early November on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge in Catskill. The gantries that support electronic tolling hardware were installed over the summer and system testing is now underway. Steber said toll lane reconfiguration and tollbooth demolition will not be scheduled until next spring. The bridge will be the third facility to  undergo conversion as NYSBA advances a $30 million project to eliminate cash collection on its system.

AET (All-Electronic Tolling) ETC Systems New York New York State Bridge Authority (NYSBA)

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Researchers Find Major Flaws In Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Infrastructure Projects

“Engineering News-Record” reports, “A large new global study of [public infrastructure] project performance over 86 years confirms that ingrained optimism bias results in forecast-based cost-benefit analyses ‘so misleading as to be worse than worthless,’ say UK researchers. While construction technology and practice have developed over the decades, failures of cost-benefit analysis ‘seem universal across space and time,’ they add.” The researchers based their conclusions on data from over two thousand public infrastructure projects — many involving transportation facilities — on six continents, but mostly in the US and Europe. According to ENR, they found “‘strong and consistent’ biases led to cost overruns not being compensated by benefit overruns, ‘but quite the opposite, on average.’ In addition, projects with large average cost overruns ‘tend to have large average benefit shortfalls.’” “Cost forecasts were found to be highly inaccurate and biased with average overruns ranging from 24% for highways to 85% for dams.” (The findings were published today in a Cambridge University journal under the title, “The Cost-Benefit Fallacy: Why Cost-Benefit Analysis Is Broken and How to Fix It.”)

Infrastructure Investment Trends Transportation and Infrastructure Research & Development

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Bestpass Management Stays Focused On Innovation And Interoperability

FreightWaves talks with Bestpass’ leadership team, CEO Tom Fogarty and President John Andrews, about the company’s remarkable growth over the past year, its twentieth providing toll management solutions for truckers. They say the company’s success is due in part to a continuous pursuit of ways to streamline toll payment processing for its customers. Expanding interoperability is one key goal. Another effort now in progress involves registering truck license plates in order to reduce toll agency time and overhead associated with video tolling. By helping agencies expedite “plate tolling” transactions, Bestpass aims to spare its customers potential costs and administrative headaches.

Automated License Plate Recognition Bestpass Interoperability

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These are just some of the toll industry developments TRN is following.

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