The International Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Association's Road Usage Charge (RUC) conference brought together tolling leaders to tackle one of the industry's most persistent challenges: revenue that never makes it from the lane to the ledger. In the session Advancing Toll Revenue Assurance and Reciprocity Across State Lines, North Highland and the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA) shared a year of progress using AI-enabled analytics to close that gap.
The scale of the problem is significant. More than $2 billion in toll revenue goes uncollected across the U.S. each year. OTA alone processes more than 280 million cashless lane events annually, and like most agencies, had limited visibility into where revenue was slipping through.
Key takeaways from the session
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Revenue leakage happens across the entire transaction lifecycle
Small defects early in the process — poor image quality, mismatched plates, bad account linkages — compound downstream into billing losses, higher write-offs, and audit risk. North Highland and OTA mapped the full transaction journey to pinpoint exactly where revenue was stalling and why.
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A unified data platform creates visibility from lane to ledger
By connecting siloed tolling, customer, and financial data into a single AI-enabled platform, OTA gained the ability to trace every trip from capture through collections and the general ledger. Exception-based monitoring replaced manual review, surfacing the highest-risk transactions first and giving staff the ability to drill down to images, invoices, payments, and GL entries from one place.
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People and talent are what turn technology into results
North Highland brought together consultants with deep transportation expertise, data engineering capability, and change management experience to work alongside OTA's team. That combination of client vision and North Highland talent is what moved the work from assessment to action, and what North Highland's Vision to Value approach is built on.
In OTA's own words
OTA's Amanda Boulden, Director of Information Technology and Toll Operations, who co-presented with North Highland’s, Senior Director, AI & Data Architecture, Doug Krauss, said it directly:
"Can't say it enough — if we did not have North Highland, we would not have been successful."
Why it matters
For agencies managing growing transaction volumes and increasing accountability, the OTA story offers a clear model: start with the right foundation, bring the right talent, and apply technology in service of outcomes you can measure and defend. The tools are ready. The use cases are proven.
Ready to strengthen revenue assurance at your agency? Discover how North Highland helps public sector transportation leaders improve financial performance, operational efficiency, and audit confidence.
