The NZTA has announced that it is changing the machines that some people use to pay for the Orewa to Puhoi toll road to accept coins only citing reliability issues with the note and card options.

The NZ Transport Agency says it is converting the Northern Gateway Toll Road manual kiosks at the Dairy Flats service centre to accept payment by coin-only in order to reduce the risk of kiosk breakdowns and shorten queuing times at busy periods.

The changes will take effect from Wednesday 4 September.

Stephen Town, the Transport Agency’s Regional Director for Auckland and Northland, says moving to a coin-only at the two Dairy Flat machines will standardise payment options at both ends of the toll road, following the change to coin-only in mid-2011 for the manual kiosks at Puhoi.

“It’s more than four years since the toll road opened, and more than 90 percent of drivers are now choosing non-cash payment options that don’t require them to stop and interrupt their trip. The roadside kiosks are now an old technology, spare parts are no longer available, and the cost of maintaining them is rising,” Mr Town says

“The majority of faults involve the bank note and card payment options. Breakdowns leave people frustrated, and that is something we want to eliminate by making the machines coin-only and streamlining the payment process.”

An average 5 million trips are undertaken each year on the toll road. The number of people paying for trips at the kiosks has declined from around 30% when the toll road opened in January 2009 to less than 10% of all trips between July-December 2012. (Cash purchases accounted for approximately 8% of kiosk transactions during that 6 month period).

People will still be able to buy single or multiple trips when the Dairy Flat kiosks become coin-only next month.

Buying trips at www.tollroad.govt.nz remains the best option for casual and regular travellers because they do not need to stop before using the highway and no administration charge applies.

For those travellers who still prefer to pay manually, however, the Transport Agency will have staff on duty at the Dairy Flat Centre service station for the first few days to help make the switch to coin-only kiosks as smooth as possible.

“We hope the coin-only kiosks will operate more reliably and make journeys a little more enjoyable for those who like to pay their tolls this way,” says Mr Town.

As the NZTA say, only 8% of people are now paying using these machines so it shouldn’t affect too many people. I must say though, I have always found it weird and incredibly stupid that people would exit the motorway to pay the toll. The reason for that is the amount of time that people take to do this is about how long it would take them just to stay on the motorway and then use the old free route. This is even more so as the cash payment options cost 40c more per trip.

On a similar note, while the number of people paying using the kiosks declined, a significant number still use the old route for what I’m sure are a variety of reasons. The NZTA used to release the traffic volume data for both routes monthly however at the beginning of this year they stopped doing so as they handed the road over to Auckland Transport. Before the monitoring stopped around 28% of all traffic was using the free route. I assume the traffic counters are still in the road so it would be handy if Auckland Transport could start releasing the traffic volumes monthly like the NZTA do.

Orewa to Puhoi

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32 comments

  1. Every time I go through there I lament the lack of ‘pay-by-text’ option. Surely it would be do-able to text your registration number to a nominated phone number and the required amount taken off your credit…? I’m sure it would mean fewer people would forget to pay.

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  4. I travel this route every day ( I have to, there is no PT alternative) and use the toll road because it saves me time and fuel. I have an account and my journeys are automatically charged to my account each time I pass under the gantries, but I still have to pay $2.20 per trip, ie $4.40 per day. I believe that as a regular user with an account I should be entitled to receive a discount, but NZTA clearly don’t see it that way.
    The 20c charge is NOT for cash payment. It’s an increase that was applied across the board, I believe about 12 months ago.

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    1. The cash payment fee is 40c (here) so if you bought a return trip it would cost you $4.80 at the kiosk.

      Whether frequent users should be given a discount is debatable. It is common practice for PT, but not for roads. In either case I’m not quite sure what the reason for subsidising frequent users is, but I’m sure there is some.

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  5. “I must say though, I have always found it weird and incredibly stupid that people would exit the motorway to pay the toll.”

    So people exit the motorway, stop, get out of their car and physically pay at a machine?

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    1. Yup. It’s less stupid than it sounds if you’re

      A. going north, and
      B. already stopping at Dairy Flat for petrol or terrible motorway services food.

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        1. It’s sort of backward and forward at the same time. Most people pay by credit card online, or on account, which is more advanced because you don’t have to stop. But unlike most motorways around the world, there’s no manned toll gates if you want to pay cash.

          It was a legal requirement for the toll road that there be a cash option. It’s not something you’re actually supposed to use. What I don’t get, is why there couldn’t be a coin-op gate that you can use without getting out of your car, like a lot of motorways in the US have. You can slow to walking pace, chuck a carefully-prepared handful of shrapnel in a giant funnel, and the gate opens automatically. They’re amazingly fast, and no human supervision needed.

        2. If we are to compare to overseas we must note that in most countries the cash option is being removed. In Australia pretty much all tollways have no cash option now, and in California (and presumably other states in the US) the same in happening now with completion sometime next year from memory. I think the trend is less strong in Europe but it’s still there.

          As discussed in another post I don’t think you could have a bucket without human supervision, plus there would be some risk of queues forming on the mainline.

        3. I’ve paid tolls in Florida in a bucket with no supervision, so I promise you it’s possible. You can chuck in $1 (or whatever) in quarters, nickels and dimes and the machine will count it all in a second or two. This machine, for example:

          http://goo.gl/maps/N6QIy (the far left lane, where it says “Exact Coins”)

          Florida has a hell of a lot of toll roads, and most of them have free-flow tolling (Sunpass), but every toll point has gates as well. Normally there’s an automated machine, and a few human operators who can take notes and give change, but some toll points are completely unmanned, especially at night.

          They solve the queue issue by not putting the toll gantries on the mainline at all – they’re on a long slip lane instead. Long enough to handle quite a queue, which is one big drawback – they take up a lot of space:

          http://goo.gl/maps/SXZrG

        4. I paid by coin in in a bucket in Sydney (maybe the west) almost 10yrs ago. We literally threw handfuls of small change into the bucket as it counted it, until we ticked over the right amount. No supervision.

          I much prefer the non-cash option in Malaysia of a stored card which is read by a scanner as you drive through. The amount is deducted from your balance (which appears on the screen near the exit) the boom gate opens and off you go.

          I’m still flabbergasted you have to get out of your car to pay the toll. That’s ludicrous.

        5. Do you think we should do what they do in Europe and the USA and have everyone slow down and stop to pay by coin?

          Or maybe we can do it the Australian way where everyone buys a $70 tracker for their car and anyone who is only using the road once can make a 20min phone call to pay their toll?

        6. Gotta say I agree with you here SF. If the idea of stopping to pay a toll is unacceptable, take the free road. Or, do as myself and many others do, set up an account. Welcome to 2013.

        7. I was working on upgrading one of the Sydney toll roads last year. Apparently they get about 30% of their revenue from the cash lanes which I thought was darn strange given their E-Tag thing works nation wide.

          I still have one in my car over here.

    2. And all this paying your toll manually probably takes about the same extra time as driving the free route, which by the looks of it, a reasonable number of people have figured out. There is still a lot of traffic passing through Orewa and plenty of it doesn’t abide by the 30 km/h speed limit in front of the shops.

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  6. So, what they are saying is that their machines are unreliable, so less people are able to use them, so now they will reduce the choices of the few people choosing to use them.

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  7. with demands like that you would think they would adopt seasonal pricing structures, i.e. charging more in summer periods.

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      1. Is it correct to think that Omaha residents are a particularly high-income and price-insensitive market segment?

        The Northern Gateway strikes me as being absolutely ripe for time-of-use pricing. If National really believed in the efficiency of price signals then they’d do jolly well to apply them to this toll road by charging more in summer periods.

        There is the slight political issue that seasonal pricing on Northern Gateway would 1) be charging people who are more likely to vote Nact and 2) knock the peaks off summer demands and reduce the benefits of Puhoi-to-Wellsford.

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        1. I think we have learned over the years that being high income doesn’t mean you won’t scream about something something like seasonal pricing for roads. It would be presented as a public agency gouging innocent motorists who just want to get away for their holiday.

          Anyway I don’t think the road is anywhere near at capacity, the issue is only one or two days a year and where the road rejoins the free route. The rest of the summer period it isn’t a problem.

        2. should we always wait until a problem arises before fixing it? 🙂

          And that’s assuming it’s not worth doing otherwise … I suspect it would be. The lack of seasonal pricing on the Northern Gateway, for example, is partly responsible for congestion further north at Warkworth.

        3. They believe in the efficiency of price signals for other people. cf the idea that poor people should be paid less to make them work harder, while rich people must be paid more.

    1. I would imagine that the reason for mail notification is that your residential address is attached to you vehicle registration records, unlike email address or mobile numbers

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