Port Mann bridge glitches continue

In the latest technical glitch to befall Vancouver’s $2.7-billion Port Mann bridge, a Surrey, B.C., man has been charged with bridge tolls just because his license plate has the same characters as a bridge user from Washington State.

“I’ve never even been across the bridge since they started charging tolls,” said Dave Stewart, a former OPP and RCMP officer.

The 10-lane toll bridge, which connects Surrey and Coquitlam over the Fraser River, charges users either by a scanning a prepaid windshield decal or by electronically reading a car’s license plate and mailing out an invoice.

Mr. Stewart said he was unexpectedly hit with a $3 invoice for two crossings, followed by six more, earlier this year.

After repeated calls to T.I. Corp., the Crown Corporation tasked with collecting tolls for the bridge, he discovered the reason for the phantom charges was that the license plate on his grey 2012 Honda Civic, 504 TRK, also appeared to be shared by a white GMC Jimmy from just south of the border.

“The scary thing is, at the top of the first bill I got, it acknowledged that the charge was for a Washington plate,” said Mr. Stewart. “They’re just billing anybody in B.C., and with tourist season coming around this should be real fun.”

T.I. Corp. has refunded Mr. Stewart and issued an apology, but the glitch is by no means resolved.

On Monday, said Mr. Stewart, he fielded his latest call from a supervisor at the bridge company.

“He said he wanted to send me out a decal so they could identify my car, and I said ‘how is that going to help? I’ve never even crossed the bridge in the first place,” said Mr. Stewart. “He said, ‘I guess it won’t.’” Since opening to motorists in December, a number of troubles have struck the cablestayed bridge, which holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s widest span. In February, after garbling the figures on a license plate, T.I. Corp. inadvertently billed a driver in Kelowna, more than 300 kilometres inland from Vancouver.

In March, another Surrey man was hit with a hugely inflated charge after bridge sensors mistook his Ford F-150 for a tractor-trailer.

“With more than two million crossings and transactions per month, from time to time errors happen,” TI Corp. spokesman Greg Johnson told Postmedia at the time. Just as with a parking ticket, failure to pay the bridge toll can result in drivers being unable to renew their license or registration.

In December, the bridge’s very structure seemed to turn against commuters when, during a cold spell, the span bombarded drivers with “ice bombs” that had formed in its support cables. Dozens of motorists reported damaged windshields, and one driver was knocked unconscious.

T.I. Corp. was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.

The Port Mann’s electronic tolling method is much the same as that used by Ontario Highway 407, a 100-km long toll road near Toronto.

With more than 100 milli on trips per year, the 407 sees ample numbers of drivers from Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Quebec.

“We look at plates that are out-of-jurisdiction all the time … and when we do, we recognize them as being different from Ontario,” said Kevin Sack, spokesman for the toll road.

Plates viewed by 407 scanners are run through a gauntlet of algorithms scrutinizing the size and positioning of the characters on the plate. If the system detects an anomaly, the license plate is passed off to a human operator for inspection.