Mr. Chairman, under our responsibilities and under the conditions of the concession agreement, it falls under our responsibility to develop and to design and supply, install, upgrade and manage the whole toll system. There are two components to the toll system. In the capital budget, we have already received approval for the $400,000 for last year. This year, we are looking for an additional $600,000 in this budget. There are two areas that will be considered or will be invested in. This is, first of all, to do with vehicle counts and classification. For the most part, that has already been started and being worked on, also, the toll collection and administrative portions for the next 2010-11. The plan is to have the tolls collected through a permanent call centre and an account-based system for larger commercial vehicles. We also need to build and develop the pullouts and install a direct line to the call centre.
The Member has indicated that the bridge has been delayed. Well, we haven’t formally delayed the bridge. We have given all the indicators that there will be a delay. The plan was to have the bridge in place and completed with traffic crossing by November of 2010. We know that is going to be very difficult to achieve. We expect that the delay will be anywhere from six months to a year. We need to have all systems in place ready to go, depending on what the delay is. If we defer this portion of our responsibility for a year and the bridge is ready and traffic volumes are crossing, we will be losing out. We have to be ready to start counting traffic. We are already looking at classifying and trying to determine what the volumes that are going through this year, but to delay the whole system for a year would be very difficult.
In response to the Member’s question, the actual use of the capital funding would be to install a traffic counting and classification system on the bridge, to install video monitoring equipment of traffic on the bridge, to install communication equipment for real-time access to traffic counting and video equipment on the bridge, to install a turnout, a self-serve kiosk on the south approach to the bridge to allow for the toll payment, to install a boundary reading equipment on the bridge, to develop software for tracking the traffic counts and toll collection.
Mr. Chairman, there are a number of things that need to be done. I guess if we deferred it for a year in our capital process, we would probably have to come back in the form of a special warrant or something to allow us to construct this portion of toll collection that would allow us to start whenever the bridge is ready. Thank you.