December 28, 2006

OmniAir Wins Final Approval to Develop and Test Specification for National Toll Interoperability

I-95 Corridor Coalition’s Executive Committee Approves the project at the December Annual Meeting in Norfolk, Virginia.

Washington, DC – December 2006 – the OmniAir Consortium met a key objective in the association’s work plan by receiving approval from the I-95 Corridor Coalition’s Executive Committee for its funding request to develop and test an Electronic Payment Services National Interoperability Specification (EPSNIS) for tolling. The project, in short, is to define the interface protocol standards for transaction processing and test the specification on both legacy and 5.9GHz DSRC prototype systems. Throughout the project which begins in February 2007, OmniAir’s EPS Committee will work with the toll industry, banks, other payment systems stakeholders, and specifically with four partners.

The first is the New York State Bridge Authority, fulfilling the role of test site host. The Authority, an Associate Member of OmniAir, operates and maintains the Rip Van Winkle, Kinston-Rhinecliff, Mid-Hudson, Newburgh-Beacon, and Bear Mountain bridges crossing the Hudson River. NYSBA was awarded the job after OmniAir released an RFQ seeking partners. It has already begun to prepare the facility for testing.

The Corridor Coalition requires an Executive Member (one owning a facility) to sponsor any project funded by the Coalition. In the case of the EPSNIS, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is the sponsor and will provide contract oversight. The Sponsor role is not titular. It is quite significant – they take on the risk of assuring that the project will be completed. PANYNJ is on the Board of Directors of OmniAir.

Caseta Technologies, Inc. a founding member of OmniAir and well-known integrator in the US toll industry with contracts at NYSBA, MTA, and in Texas, will be providing software expertise and integration services. Caseta also serves on the Board of Directors of OmniAir.

Providing the prototype units is OmniAir Board and founding member Mark-IV IVHS. Since the inception of the 5.9GHz DSRC program, Mark-IV has been heavily involved, beginning with the standards-developing process and continuing today with hardware development as it works with other OmniAir members of the DSRC Industry Consortium and currently with automotive companies to prepare for a Proof-of-Concept.

Supplementing Corridor funding are contributions by OmniAir members. Their expertise will be applied to developing an essential component of nationally-interoperable toll systems: a managed-source specification maintained by the OmniAir Consortium and available to any financial entity or electronic payment services provider who wants to participate.

Task Details: the project is a series of tasks divided into phases: outreach, functional requirements definition, specification development and reference implementation testing.

Outreach: the development of the EPSNIS requires experienced input from inside the toll industry and peripheral to and outside of it due to the national application of the EPSNIS and the extension of the EPS paradigm outside familiar boundaries. Therefore, the first set of activities capture OmniAir member goals for an EPSNIS and identifies the like-minded organizations from the payments industry who are valuable subject matter experts (SME).

Requirements: after identifying stakeholders, next comes collaboration with them on defining functional requirements, refining them and confirming them for use to build the specification.

The Specification: this is an extensive process of specification development that begins by creating, with SMEs, a preliminary draft specification and presenting. Next is cooperation with organizations to extend and become compatible with related industry payment specifications that advance the development and acceptance of the OmniAir EPSNIS. Following this is another review and commenting process, and then a final, draft Specification which will be tested in-lane. This will result in a reference implementation test used to replicate the test at other test sites.

Key personnel on the project are: Charlie Fausti, Director of E-ZPass Programs, PANYNJ; Frank Mazzella, Bridge Manager, New York State Bridge Authority; Glenn Deitiker, CTO of Caseta Technologies; Jules Madey, Director, Technology Development, NYSTA, technical support; Japjeev Kohli, MARK-IV IVHS Senior Systems Engineer; and, Tim McGuckin, Program Manager, OmniAir. The EPS Committee which will be heavily involved is chaired by Kai Chen, Project Manager, ETC Systems, MTA Bridges & Tunnels, and Doug Kavner, DSRC Program Manager, Raytheon HTMS.

About the I-95 Corridor Coalition

The I-95 Corridor Coalition is an alliance of transportation agencies, authorities, and related organizations, including law enforcement, from the State of Maine to the State of Florida, with affiliate members in Canada. It provides a forum for policy makers to address transportation management and operations issues of common interest, focusing on the deployment of technology to improve mobility.

About the OmniAir Consortium

OmniAir is a non-profit association founded in January 2003. Its member-defined mission is to foster and promote the deployment of interoperable dedicated short-range communication systems. The consortium and its members are the foremost advocates of ‘True Interoperability’ and advance this goal through the development of the certification solutions and protocol specifications. With a diversity of interests and experience, members range from operators, device suppliers, integrators, state DOTs and others. Common goals are to improve mobility, increase efficiency, ensure safety for the traveling public and create cost savings and market opportunities for the operators and suppliers of current and next-generation DSRC systems.

OmniAir and True Interoperability are marks of the OmniAir Consortium, Inc. Any other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

For more information on OmniAir, certification, or membership, contact: Timothy McGuckin at (202) 756-0012 or mcguckin@omniair.org.