Lockheed Team Recommended for Toll System

A team headed by Lockheed Corp. will be recommended as the contractor to build and operate a futuristic collection system for Orange County’s toll roads, the county Transportation Corridor Agencies announced Friday.

An agencies selection committee chose the Lockheed team, which includes AT&T;, over three other contenders, including Hughes Aircraft Co. in Fullerton. The choice, made after a three-month evaluation, must now be approved by the agencies’ boards of directors, who are to vote Thursday.

The team chosen for the first phase of the project could have an edge on competitors in bidding for a long-term contract to build and operate the system. During the next 20 years, the automated toll-collection system proposed for Orange County could generate $600 million in contracts, said Lisa Telles, an agencies’ spokeswoman.

Like many other defense companies, Lockheed has bid on so-called “smart” highway toll-collection systems across the nation. Drivers would pay tolls using AT&T;’s smart credit cards, through which toll-road scanners would charge the amount to the cardholder’s account each time his or her car passed the checkpoint. One such system from a Lockheed competitor is already being used in Dallas, and others are being tested.

In Orange County, the winning contractor would begin work next year on a toll-collection and revenue-management system that could collect tolls electronically from cars traveling at full speed. The system would use electronic scanning technology similar to that used in price scanning at supermarket checkout stands. It would also have a back-up manual toll-collection system and use video cameras to record the license-plate numbers of toll dodgers.

Telles said the system will be installed first on a three-mile stretch of Portola Parkway on the Foothill toll road. That system should be completed by next summer, she said. The system would then be extended to the county’s proposed San Joaquin Hills, Foothill and Eastern toll roads.

Richard Martin, a spokesman for the winning Lockheed division in Teaneck, N.J., would not comment on the decision, saying that to do so before final board votes would be inappropriate.

“I’ll refrain from any jubilant comment until then,” Martin said.

Mike Stockstill, a corridor agencies’ spokesman, said he did not know why Lockheed won. The committee considered each proposal’s technical merit, then evaluated financial and operational matters.

If the decision stands, the agencies would begin negotiations with Lockheed and could sign a final deal by December, Telles said. The value of the contract, expected to be in the millions of dollars, will be revealed then.

Friday’s decision will create some local jobs immediately. Martin said Lockheed’s Information Management Services Co. will establish an office in the Irvine Spectrum area that will initially employ about 25 people. That number would be tripled should Lockheed close a deal for the corridor agencies’ contract, he said.

The Lockheed unit recommended for the toll-road project integrates technologies for systems ranging from environmental regulation to child-welfare programs. The Orange County project would be its first toll-road project in Southern California.

If a deal cannot be completed with Lockheed, then the agencies would be authorized to negotiate with Hughes, the panel’s No. 2 choice. Other contenders were Kiewit Network Technologies Inc. of Omaha and Westinghouse Electric Corp. of Baltimore.

“I’m just sitting here in shock,” said Robert Gregg, president of the Hughes subsidiary that lost the bid. “I can’t say it’s good news.”

Gregg said he hopes the corridor agencies will brief the losers as to why they did not win. Meanwhile, he said, his company will go forward with plans to establish an Orange County transportation systems management subsidiary that could employ 700 people by the year 2000.

“We will go ahead with our hiring plans because our plans are bigger than just this one project,” he said.

The selection committee included corridor agencies staff members, board members and representatives from agencies’ member cities for the San Joaquin Hills and Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency Board of Directors.