On Jan 20, 7:36*am, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 19:29:03 on
Thu, 19 Jan 2012, Michael Finfer remarked:

I doubt that a Smart Card would be used for bridge and tunnel tolls as
most cars in the greater New York area are equipped with special
transponders that toll gates read. They can also be used on other road
agencies' territories -- even in Ontario, in Canada.

Who knows, though?

It's the same technology, RFID, but tapping a smart card at a toll
booth defeats the big advantage that electronic tolling systems have:
no need to stop and open your window.

I'm not sure why any agency would go the smart card route for tolls.

Instead of cash, for non-regular users. There's a toll bridge/tunnel at
the Thames Estuary, for example, and while they have a transponder
scheme my usage of the crossing when I lived nearby was only perhaps
once a year. A contactless credit card seems a better bet than adding
interoperability to any particular transport smart card though.

Contactless payments at the Dartford Crossing (which is the toll
bridge/tunnel in the Thames Estuary to which Roland refers) would be a
useful innovation - at present they don't accept debit/credit cards as
a payment method whatsoever, so you either need cash or a "Dart-
Tag" (they do apparently take Euro coins/notes too, presumably at an
unfavourable exchange rate, but they don't advertise it).

Take up of the Dart-Tag isn't that high either, nor are there any
'express' Dart-Tag only lanes - instead there are 'exact change only +
Dart-Tag' lanes with buckets in which you throw the exact change. I
think there were Dart-Tag only lanes in the past, dunno why they were
ditched (poss because the relatively low take up of the Tags made them
an inefficient use of lanes in the toll plazas?).

http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/projects/4065.aspx