Since 1974, TRMI has been producing custom-integrated electronic toll collection systems for public and private organizations. TRMI installed the nation's first all solid-state toll collection system at the Golden Gate Bridgein 1981, and has since installed systems from Norway to Australia. This has provided TRMI with a broad base of experience and an in-depth knowledge of all facets of toll collection.
While cultivating long-term relationships with its customers, TRMI continues to improve its equipment and systems, keeping pace with the demands of the industry and the challenge of changing technology. We do this by taking a broad view of the business (30 years of perspective) and couple that with actively looking to other industries for ideas and practices to help us, such as agile methodologies and management by objectives. The result is that TRMI designs and installs systems utilizing proven designs that are highly functional, yet easy to understand and maintain.
Key features are achieved by promoting a balance of custom components and off-the-shelf-products. Our philosophy holds that the key to an optimum (price/performance) system is in selecting and matching proven products and customized software tailored to the customer’s unique requirements.
TRMI has 35+ employees. We have a core group of 25 technical and professional personnel who work in the toll system development group, supported by administrative personnel, and other personnel who work in our manufacturing and assembly department. In addition, we have technical consultants who have steadily worked for us for many years and function as adjunct staff.
All design and software engineering, CADD design, assembly and test are done in-house with our own personnel. Our New York headquarters has 30,000 square feet allocated to system development, assembly, and production, including a 325,000 cubic foot manufacturing area and an outdoor test track with a variable geometry ETC gantry. Our development lab equipment includes over 100 lane controllers, workstations, routers and servers comprising over a dozen maintenance support toll systems.
TRMI excels at working with customers to understand their requirements. We then document the system requirements and the system design in a manner best suited for each customer. For some customers, this document focuses on functionality. For other customers we provide extensive technical detail and conduct several days of critical design review. In either case, our goal is to do this with the most concise document set that will satisfy customer requirements. The result of this lean writing style is documents which are practical to use. The benefits are increased communication effectiveness and reduced labor costs for customers, consultants, and contractors when performing design reviews.
TRMI’s software development process is a combination of traditional Rational Corporation’s Unified Process (RUP) methodologies and modern agile methodologies for software development. This rapid application development approach provides early prototypes for review. It also allows for easy accommodation of customer requested changes as the project progresses. This lightweight process embodies elements of Extreme Programming, Crystal and Scrum methodologies adapted to our development environment.
A key benefit of this approach is that prototype software is available for customer preview within six weeks of the start of the project.
Our customers include nearly every US public toll agency, several private toll facilities, foreign toll authorities, major US construction firms, as well as other toll system integrators like TransCore and ACS. TRMI customers come back to us year after year as they have come to depend on TRMI’s outstanding products and excellent customer service.
Our line of toll system products includes standard parts such as treadles and high speed automatic coin sorters. We also custom manufacture equipment such as RFID readers per customer provided designs. If desired, we collaborate using a design/build approach to produce specialized equipment such as we did for the New York State Thruway’s ticket processing machines which won an IBTTA technical award.
Our turnkey toll collection systems use software we develop with our in-house staff. We continually update our software technology and development tools to provide customers with maximum longevity from their projects.
Installation is a critical, but sometimes overlooked phase of a project. TRMI does all of its own installation work rather than delegating it to a third party. Since most of our projects involve retrofitting existing toll facilities, we understand the need to maintain operations and maximize capacity during peak periods. Our installation crews always develop good rapport with facility supervisors and successfully collaborate to get the new equipment installed with minimal disruption to patrons and users. Any of our customers will gladly tell you that we excel in this area, and that their operations personnel are pleased with our work methods.
Additionally, doing the work ourselves assures us that the hardware is correctly installed and will yield the maximum performance and life. Later, it allows us to provide the most cost effective technical support and maintenance because our technical personnel know the exact configuration and are familiar with the facilities, practices and staff of each location.
We offer a complete range of maintenance service contracts. Cost effective system up-time is our constant goal. Some of our customers request that we train their technical staff and that they maintain their own systems, while other customers prefer to outsource the entire maintenance activity. TRMI has contracts where we provide maintenance on every subsystem and other contracts where we cooperate with other vendor maintenance personnel to support our customer.
As needed, TRMI provides personnel, training, spare parts, spare equipment, tools, radios, pagers, cell phones, laptop computers, field offices, pick-ups, vans, lift trucks and factory support to ensure prompt response and repair service. We invite you to call us and welcome your RFQs.
Charlie Mitchell
Vice President,TRMI
cmitchell@TRMI.com
TRMI installed the nation's first all solid-state toll collection system at the Golden Gate Bridge in 1981.