Delays at Toll Booths — Why Wait in Line?

The key to eliminating toll booth delays is understanding that they are primarily caused by lack of throughput at toll plazas, not by the fact that vehicles must slow down to pay a toll. A straightforward improvement to toll plaza operations is the addition of gates. However, if this addition is made abreast of the existing gates, it is deficient in two ways. A solution that promises to eliminate toll delays is the use of Automatic Vehicle Identification in conjunction with fully automated toll gates. In such a system, a vehicle carries an identification tag that is read by an instrumented toll gate, while the cars go through without need to slow down.