Partner News: Egis at the Olympics

Date: 10 March 2010

Egis Projects, through its Canadian subsidiary, Transroute International Canada Services (TICS), is in charge of the operation of the free-flow tolling on the Golden Ears Bridge in Vancouver until 2017. The bridge opened on 16 June 2009. The total amount of this contract for Egis is about 59 million Canadian dollars (€41 million).

The 6-lane Golden Ears Bridge crosses the Fraser River from Pitt Meadows to Langley and Surrey. Being part of a newly opened 14-kilometre road network, the bridge is a key component of the road development program in Metro Vancouver region (2 million inhabitants). The bridge connects two growing residential and industrial communities, reducing the average crossing time by 30 to 45 minutes. Because of the significant time saving, it is expected that the economic competitiveness of the northeast sector of Metro Vancouver will be substantially improved and that transportation conditions in Vancouver during the period of the Olympic Games remain acceptable.

TransLink, Greater Vancouver’s regional transportation authority, was responsible for the design, construction, and current maintenance of the Golden Ears Bridge. As of January 2010, the tolls range between $1.40 and $9.40 (€1 and €6.60) based on vehicle classification and account type. The current average daily traffic is about 22,000 vehicles.

Egis Projects is the leader of the V-Flow consortium together with two other companies, Intrans Group, an American subsidiary of CS, in charge of the maintenance of the system, and Sanef, a French based company is the project adviser. The tolling is based on a Free-Flow system, i.e. the vehicles cross the bridge without stopping or slowing down at a toll point. This free-flow system is part of a sustainable development approach as there is no waiting to pay.

The system comprises:

• two gantries which house equipment allowing the detection of transponders in vehicles, the recording of license plate numbers and the classification of vehicles for the calculation of fares
• a fully integrated back office system which invoices users, manages transactions and financial management, customer relations management, interactive website, transponder management, correspondence management, and enforcement management.

The bridge users have the choice to register for a transponder account taking advantage of the lowest fares for an initial deposit and a low monthly administration fee; alternatively they can register for a video account for a slightly higher toll rate. Infrequent users can choose to remain unregistered, and receive their invoice the month following their crossing at the highest toll rate.

Egis Projects, through TICS, has two customer service centres, one located on each side of the bridge, and hired a staff of 33 people with expertise and experience in their areas of responsibility – tolling, finance, quality, customer service, maintenance, and accounting.

This team of experts performs the toll operations, and in particular achieved the management of the outstanding results below:

• registration of over 36,200 transponder and 22,000 video accounts to date
• management of accounts and subscribers for over 351,000 unregistered users
• reconciliation of 22,000 daily transactions of electronic tolling, with or without transponders (the system is sized to manage up to 50 million transactions a year)
• the review of over 323,000 monthly images for video detected transactions
• processing over 300,000 monthly invoices
• reconciliation of all the transactions and the payments
• daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly operational and financial reporting to TransLink

Egis offers various contact channels (toll free telephone number, 24 hour Interactive-Voice-Response, Website www.quickpasstolling.ca, customer care email customercare@quickpasstolling.ca, in-person contacts, correspondence by mail or fax). Egis offers also a variety of payment methods to enable customers to pay their tolls. These include on-line payment, telephone banking, branch banking, Automated Teller Machines, debit card, pre-authorized debit to account, Visa and Mastercard, and IVR (Interactive Voice Response).
Egis has set up several business partnerships with e.g. Kelly Services, Royal Bank of Canada, Moneris Solutions or RR Donnelley. A close relationship has also been established with the Katzie First Nation whose lands are crossed by the Golden Ears Bridge. Some Katzie members have been recruited as part of TICS staff.

The successful operation of this project in Canada is a further proof of Egis Projects’ capability to export its know how throughout the world and consolidates the position of Egis Projects as a leader in ORT (Open Road Tolling) operations just before the Olympic Games which are taking place in Vancouver from 12 to 28 February 2010.

Frost & Sullivan has recently recognised the leadership of Egis Projects in this field by awarding it the “2009 Global Electronic Toll Collection Growth Leadership Award”. This award recognises Egis Projects for its extraordinary growth and innovative contributions to the Intelligent Transport Systems industry.

For more information, see www.egis-projects.com or www.egis.fr

Download the press release in English.pdf (172.8 KB) or French.pdf (169.4 KB)