OKLAHOMA CITY – Conversion of the H.E. Bailey Turnpike to “PlatePay” cashless tolling between Newcastle and Lawton is scheduled to start later this month, and conversion of the section between Lawton and the Texas state line, including the Walters tollgate, is slated to start in July.
H.E. Bailey mainline toll plazas between Oklahoma City and Lawton will be completely cashless starting June 21, and the entire toll road is expected to be cashless by late July, Oklahoma Turnpike Authority spokesman James Poling said.
The OTA approved a PlatePay rate schedule for the H.E. Bailey Turnpike during a special meeting June 9.
With PlatePay, tollbooths and coin machines will become a thing of the past. Motorists who do not have a PikePass will no longer have to stop to pay a toll. Instead, a vehicle’s license plate will be photographed automatically, and an invoice will be sent to the registered owner of the vehicle.
The Turnpike Authority will install 40 camera systems on the H.E.B at a cost of approximately $2.9 million, Poling said.
PlatePay rates will be substantially higher than PikePass rates and cash tolls. PlatePay customers will pay an average of 75% more than the current cash rates because of the expenses incurred in collecting the tolls via mailed invoices.
PikePass customers receive a discount of nearly 20% on tolls across the turnpike system and a volume discount program. PikePass rates on the Bailey will remain the same after the conversion, Poling said.
“We always advise those who will be traveling the turnpike system that the cheapest way to travel is with a PikePass account,” Oklahoma Secretary of Transportation and OTA Executive Director Tim Gatz said last July.
This year marks the 31st anniversary of Oklahoma’s electronic PikePass.
The Turnpike Authority reports approximately three million vehicles are equipped with PikePass transponders that are attached to the vehicle’s windshield and electronically record when the vehicle enters and exits a toll road.
To date the Kilpatrick Turnpike in northwestern Oklahoma City and the Kickapoo Turnpike in eastern Oklahoma County, plus one ramp on the Creek Turnpike in Tulsa County, have totally cashless tolling.
Conversion of the entire turnpike system to cashless tolling is a matter of convenience and necessity, OTA Deputy Director Joe Echelle told the Turnpike Authority.
“We recognize the fact that our customers want a safe, fast and efficient way to travel our system,” Gatz said previously. “Converting to cashless tolling will relieve motorists who struggle to find money to put in the coin machines.” One of the biggest complaints from patrons of Oklahoma’s turnpike system “is that we still expect them to carry a pocketful of quarters,” Gatz said.
Additionally, coin receptacles on Oklahoma’s turnpikes “have to be specially manufactured because nobody uses them anymore.”
Safety, too, is a major factor. Cashless tolling will reduce the number of accidents at toll plazas, Gatz said. Turnpike toll plazas are “some of the highest accident locations on our network,” he told members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives’ Transportation Committee last year.
That’s because the plazas present three opportunities for traffic collisions, he said: when a driver exits the turnpike to enter the toll plaza, when a motorist stops at the tollbooth, and “when you re-enter the mainline.”
Most recently, a pickup approaching the Newcastle gate while on cruise control plowed into the crash attenuator and “narrowly missed the tollbooth,” Echelle reported.
Two years ago, a Jackson County Medical Services ambulance traveling from the Altus area to Oklahoma City on the Bailey crashed into the Newcastle tollbooth. An Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper said that as the ambulance driver entered the toll zone she struck the attenuator, continued through the gate and smashed into the tollbooth. Four people were injured: a patient, two paramedics, and the toll attendant, who “somehow survived the horrible accident,” Gatz recalled.
The OTA awarded a $7.4 million contract to Haskell Lemon Construction Co. of Oklahoma City to convert the H.E. Bailey Turnpike to totally cashless tolling.
The project features conversion of the turnpike mainline, entrance/exit ramps and spur interchanges at SH-4, SH-5, US-277, US-62 and SH-76. The work has included installation of overhead gantries (trusses), guardrails, generators, cabinets, propane tanks, conduit, and some paving construction. “We can order the signs and convert a portion of the Bailey maybe in the next couple of weeks,” Echelle told the OTA.
The Bailey generated $33.8 million in toll revenue in 2021, according to Wendy Smith, the OTA’s director of finance and revenue.
The H.E. Bailey logged more than 20.7 million transactions last year; each time a toll is charged or collected counts as a transaction. Two-axle vehicles such as passenger cars and pickups accounted for 18.6 million of those transactions (89.7%); three-axle vehicles, 405,193 transactions (2%); four-axle vehicles, 231,835 (1.1%); five-axle vehicles, 1.46 million transactions (7%); and six-axle vehicles, 48,271 (0.2%).