In just over two years, eGo tags issued exceed 400,000, well ahead of PRHTA's initial five-year goal of 300,000 and represent a more rapid adoption curve than experienced in many earlier systems throughout the United States. "We are ahead of schedule, and the overwhelming success of this program is centered on accessibility and low cost of the tag, and providing electronic toll collection to a cash-based economy," said Felipe Luyanda, deputy executive director for the PRHTA. "Offering this type of convenience to our drivers was key to the program's acceptance."
Adapting electronic toll collection in Puerto Rico presented unique difficulties, since a high percentage of Puerto Ricans do not maintain bank accounts or credit cards. With a cash-based culture, the system had to be conceptually re-engineered by PRHTA and TransCore to look beyond the traditional credit card based architecture and business rules, and allow users to pay cash to refill their account.
"Puerto Rico was the first toll authority to adopt the eGo technology and has proven the need for a more economical, while functionally robust, tag to accelerate adoption of ETC," said John Worthington, TransCore's president. "The success in Puerto Rico is transferable to the continental United States, where eGo tags are now being widely adopted in many states. It's an impressively affordable way to gain customers and increase toll collection throughput."
An additional benefit of the windshield sticker tag is that it adheres to the windshield as opposed to Velcro, reducing the vast majority of misreads and violations because of a customer inaccurately holding up or waving a tag. This benefit also reduces the operational and system demands to process violations, streamlining manpower and system needs.