The International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association gathered 12 past presidents to discuss the 93-year history of the organization at its 93rd Annual Meeting in Denver. During the panel, the participants recalled such notable events and challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic, the push for electronic tolling and tolling interoperability, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which occurred during the 2001 Annual Meeting in Boston.
From ATBA to IBTTA
George Zilocchi, who served as IBTTA president in 1991, gave an overview of IBTTA’s history, which began with the founding of the American Toll Bridge Association in the depths of the Great Depression with just 36 members. Its first annual meeting was held in 1933 in Camden, N.J., with 45 members in attendance.
In 1949, the group’s name was changed to the American Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Association, and the organization added an executive director position in 1961. Three years later, ABTTA became the International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association.
The evolution of IBTTA
Today, drivers don’t think much about paying tolls while driving at highway speeds, but the effort to expand electronic tolling goes back decades, with the Electronic Toll and Traffic Management committee created in 1990 to address the industry’s transition away from manual toll collection. Texas agencies had already pioneered electronic toll collection in 1989 with Amtech equipment on the Dallas North Tollway. The tollway originally featured a 5-cent surcharge, which was eventually removed, leading to the number of tag holders doubling, said Susan Buse, president of SBuse Consulting and 2008 IBTTA president.
In the summer of 1990, the Electronic Toll and Traffic Management committee held a symposium in New York City, which was the first conference IBTTA held where a large number of exhibitors attended to show what their tech was all about, according to Zilocchi. During these years, IBTTA changed “from infancy to adulthood,” Zilocchi added. IBTTA began adding electronic tolling tracks to each conference, which eventually led to today’s annual Technology Summit.
In 1993, IBTTA established its Finance Committee, offering year-round financial oversight that went beyond mere annual budget approval. The move would be pivotal decades later, when the long-term reserve fund sustained IBTTA through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shaking up the annual meeting format
Mary Jane O’Meara, vice president of HNTB Corporation, was IBTTA’s president in 1999, and wanted to do more with the annual meeting format.
“We just come down here and this is like an old boys’ club,” she said. “We voted the budget, maybe a couple of other things, and then you go play golf. Then you come back and there’s an incredible dinner and a boat that takes you off through Miami, and then we go home. I said, ‘You can continue to be a boys club, or you can become an organization that will be respected and looking at the changes that are happening in our industry.'”
Under O’Meara’s leadership, the meetings became full-day events. “We did serious work, and I was proud of it. And they didn’t kill me!”
Meeting in Boston on 9/11
On Sept. 11, 2001, the IBTTA Annual Meeting was in progress in Boston, with the general session taking place as the second plane hit the World Trade Center, creating chaos, concern for colleagues and loved ones, and travel disruptions.
Harold Worrall was IBTTA’s incoming president for 2002 and was “kind of flying high” with the anticipation of the new role, but everything changed quickly that day.
“After this happened, there were no planes in the sky. There were no cars being rented. We weren’t quite sure how to proceed with the meetings. Were we going to have a meeting?” Worrall said. He remembered not knowing what to say to everyone on Tuesday night as the incoming president. “But I must tell you that everyone pulled together. We have people who rented buses and dropped people off as they went back, because it was the only way to get back.”
The event had many who stepped up behind the scenes to help, including O’Meara, whose agency hosted the meeting that year. O’Meara immediately sought out a colleague in attendance who was at the World Trade Center when it was bombed in 1993 and called to have a counselor present for attendees who needed someone to talk to. She also tried to help everyone get back to their homes and had the hotel extend the stays of those who couldn’t travel. O’Meara displayed “true leadership that day and every day after,” said Kary Witt, moderator of the panel and president of IBTTA in 2009.
Challenging Tomorrow’s Leaders
James Ely, chairman emeritus of toll services for HNTB Corporation, served as IBTTA president in 2007 and said the board had a “collective vision” for a leadership platform that would help graduates advance to leaderships positions within their agencies and potentially within IBTTA itself.
The vision led to the Leadership Academy, which now boasts several hundred graduates. The academy’s success lies in helping participants learn that regardless of public, private, US or international backgrounds, everyone has the same goal — to make the industry better. “Among the goals of the Leadership Academy is to help future leaders understand all aspects of the tolling operation and to develop their leadership skills to lead all kinds of people.”
Pushing for national tolling interoperability
With the advent of electronic tolling, drivers began to wonder why their passes wouldn’t work in multiple states or allow long road trips without multiple regional toll accounts. From 2011 to 2015, IBTTA was already hard at work to make the vision of tolling interoperability a reality.
Javier Rodriguez, chief strategy officer of Metric Engineering, was IBTTA’s president in 2015 as a congressional deadline loomed for tolling interoperability in 2016. From 2011-2014, the topic “sucked up their air in every room we went. Every issue was around interoperability — national — how it was going to be done, and why it shouldn’t be done.”
Although IBTTA’s efforts in this area continues through its National Interoperability Committee, the last two decades have seen remarkable strides in this area, allowing agencies and drivers alike to benefit.
Leading IBTTA through COVID-19
Mark Compton led IBTTA through the COVID-19 pandemic, helping the organization pivot to virtual meetings and online engagement. It was a tumultuous time for the industry, with reduced traffic and safety concerns for toll booth workers.
“As things start to unfold in March of that year, the realization starts to dawn on you as part of the executive committee that a group whose culture is about getting together and meeting is not going to be possible,” Compton said. “So what I saw and got to witness in this transition year was a staff led by [former Executive Director and CEO] Pat Jones and [interim Executive Director and CEO] Wanda Klayman that I think was one of the best organizational pivots in the history of this association and in the history of any association.”
At its most challenging stage, the pandemic left IBTTA at 20% of its usual revenue, Compton said. But the organization — and the industry — weathered the storm. With the 89th Annual Meeting in Anaheim, Calif., IBTTA members and leadership reconvened for the first time in well over a year, which Compton called “one of the highlights of my professional career.”
Adapting for the Future
Current IBTTA President James Hoffman discussed the life cycles of associations as the panel came to a close. “When you look at associations, they have a life cycle. They grow, the plateau, and at some point, if you don’t continue to grow and reinvent yourself, you die off. And asking the members over the last year, ‘Where do you think we are?’ A lot of you said we’re at the plateau. So that drove the strategic plan.”
Hoffman noted that a transportation technology revolution is underway, and dynamic risks such as policy shifts, costs and cybersecurity concerns are impacting the industry. He challenged members to help craft a plan that would propel IBTTA into the future, which led to an unprecedented effort that included virtual workshops and in-person conferences.
As the panel came to a close, Witt challenged attendees with a question: “We are just seven years away from IBTTA’s 100th anniversary — what will we celebrate?”