Electronic Toll Collection System Audit

Drive led independent audit of Washington State Department of Transportation’s Electronic Toll Collection System. The audit included verification of toll lane Closed Circuit Television Camera (CCTV) feeds, identification of repeat and missing toll transactions, verification of optical character recognition system performance, and validation of point to point and point to multi-point fare transactions while accounting for congestion-based fare fluctuations. The audit investigated a 30-day period which included verification of at least 300 trips and 500 fare transactions for each of the four (4) major roadways per day.

For transaction verifications Drive utilized video recordings and images captured by the toll plazas. Using this information Drive confirmed whether all vehicles were captured by the plaza, whether the images captured both front and rear license plates, and whether the vehicle class was assigned correctly. Explanations of any errors or irregularities found, which would occur with specialty plates, vehicles with trailers, blind spots in the video footage, inclement weather conditions, were also provided.

For plate recognition Drive used images captured by the toll plazas to verify that the system generated the correct license plate information in comparison to the images.

Drive also provided trip building through spreadsheets that showed vehicle transaction data for vehicles for their entire trip including time logs for each plaza they passed through. Drive verified that vehicles received the correct charges according to the highway parameters that drive the cost of the highway. Additionally Drive identified any “split trips” or vehicles that had their entire trip split into two (2) or more transactions on the trip log, indicating errors in reporting and identification.