Open Road Tolling
It is the future of toll collection on busy expressways across the country and MDX is leading Florida into the future of transportation technology. Open Road Tolling will give you the freedom to drive straight through a toll collection point without having to stop or slow down. There is no need to search for change to pay the toll or decrease your speed as you approach the tolling area. The future of tolling is an open road expressway that automatically deducts your user fee without you have doing to anything beyond driving straight through it.
Just imagine:
- 400 cars can pass through a manned toll booth per hour
- 600 cars can pass through an exact change lane per hour
- 1200 cars can pass through a SunPass dedicated lane per hour
- 2200 cars can pass through an Open Road Tolling lane per hour
Although open road tolling lanes are innovations of the near future, MDX continues to prove itself as the Authority for Mobility in Miami-Dade by bringing this state-of-the-art technology to South Florida. The open road tolling lanes on SR 836 eastbound, also known as the Wing, are the first of its kind for any urban setting in the state of Florida. SunPass users can go through the open road tolling lane's collection points at normal traffic speed and the electronic payment is automatically deducted.
Additional open road tolling pilot projects are currently being designed as part of the on-going SR 836 extension project and the SR 874 improvement project. It is just a matter of time before all toll plazas join the dinosaurs and we have tolling points throughout the system without any tollbooths or congested toll plazas. Not only will this system-wide effort make your travels on the expressways more free-flowing, it will also save you money by only tolling you for the portion of the road you travel. All of MDX's expressways will have gantries that will span the roadway at predetermined points (before each exit ramp for example) and only toll you for the sections of the expressway you use. The following is an example of how this would work:
Today your family is planning on going to South Beach for the day and you enter SR 836 from the 37th Ave entrance ramp. Traveling east on SR 836 for almost 3 miles, you reach the toll plaza where the toll is $1.00 Cash and $.75 for SunPass. This equates to about $.33/mile for cash and $.25/mile for SunPass. In the Open Road Tolling environment the system would have the predetermined tolling points between exits (see illustration of example above). Your travel is depicted in blue and the tolling points you will travel through are in green. Based on the per mile rate of the system (say $.15/mile) you would pay only $.45 ($.15/mile x 3 miles) for this trip, a savings of 55% from the cash rate and 40% of the SunPass rate you would pay today. Although this is only and example, it depicts MDX's mission of "Moving Miami-Dade" in an innovative and equitable way to all its users.
