JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) – RiverLink’s oversight board on Thursday approved a new customer call center on Linn Station Road near Hurstbourne Parkway in Louisville that is expected to create 60 jobs.
The Kentucky-Indiana Joint Board required a locally-based center when it hired Electronic Transaction Consultants LLC of Texas in 2021 to take over the toll system’s behind-the-scenes work this year. Since the start of tolling in late 2016, the work had occurred in Austin, Texas, Puerto Rico and Muncie, Indiana.
The Louisville facility at 10168 Linn Station Road will replace the Muncie operation, which is run by a subcontractor of current RiverLink operator Kapsch TrafficCom. It will handle calls about RiverLink but not accept walk-in customers; existing locations in downtown Louisville and in Jeffersonville will continue that service.
“We are excited Louisville will be the call center’s new home,” Kentucky Transportation Secretary Jim Gray, a joint board member, said in a statement. “RiverLink customers will receive top-notch customer service from representatives who live and work in the areas they serve.”
The joint board, which includes the top transportation and finance officials in both states, also agreed to pay Electronic Transaction Consultants, or ETC, $197,917 annually toward the call center lease and increase that amount 2.5 percent each year.
The states long have sought to bring a call center to the Louisville area. Officials pondered a move in 2018 that would have created an estimated 75 jobs, and in 2019 a consultant’s review recommended that Kentucky and Indiana consider a state-owned, local call center.
Joint board member Mike Smith, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Transportation, said after Thursday’s meeting that having the call center in the area is a win-win for Kentucky and Indiana.
“I think the thing that both states prioritize is having local customer service agents, a local operation that could benefit our local economy and the region, but also the folks that you're talking to are folks that have the same challenges, issues, and potentially are using the bridge themselves as well,” Smith told WDRB News.
Tolling changes
A separate panel, the RiverLink tolling body, also made several changes to tolling rules ahead of the operations change from Kapsch to ETC starting this summer.
They include pausing invoices for drivers who don’t have a RiverLink account from April 1 to July 1. After that date, the bills for the crossings made during that period will be mailed in a single batch.
“Our effort, really, is to make this as simple, clean and easy for the public as we can,” said Smith, who also serves on the tolling body.
The delay in invoices won’t apply to drivers with a pre-paid RiverLink account linked to a transponder.
Elsewhere, the joint board approved creating a monthly billing cycle for tolls and agreed to let drivers with transponders credit some crossings that didn’t register include those in the frequent user discount program.
That program lets drivers get a 50 percent discount when they make 40 crossings in a calendar month.
Board members also passed rules that will result in all tolls being billed. Previously, tolls weren’t pursued until they exceeded $5.
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