Traffic passes through KTA toll booth at the Lecompton interchange on I-70 Wednesday, Dec., 2, 2015.

Topeka ? The Kansas Turnpike Authority says it’s making progress in meeting a federal mandate for all state toll highways to be “inter-operable” by next year, but it can’t guarantee it will meet the Oct. 1 deadline.

“Despite the fact that the inter-operability mandate was a little loose in certain areas, we are working diligently on agreements with other states and agencies,” KTA spokeswoman Rachel Bell said, adding that KTA hopes to have more information available by the middle of next year.

The mandate was included in a federal highway funding bill enacted in 2012 known as the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act,” or MAP-21.

The inter-operability provision would enable drivers who pay tolls in their home state automatically through an electronic transponder such as K-Tag to use those same transponders on any toll highway in the country.

One of the problems, Bell said, is that the federal legislation doesn’t specify exactly how the systems are to be inter-operable. In addition, she said, there are many different types of automatic-pay systems, some developed by private companies that serve multiple states and others that are state-specific.

K-Tag, she said, is a proprietary system developed and owned by the state of Kansas.

So far, Bell said, KTA has successfully linked its system with that of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’s PikePass. “We’ve been doing that for just over a year. Our customers seem to really appreciate that,” she said.

In addition, she said, KTA is working with two systems that serve the commercial trucking industry.

“Two options we’ve recently started offering for commercial customers are the ability to use BestPass’ Horizon transponder and PrePass Plus’ ElitePass,” she said.

Those systems are easier to integrate, Bell said, because the drivers are actually customers of those companies.

“They look to us like one large account,” she said. “We haven’t had to do anything except set up a little file transfer, or FTP site.”

But other systems such as E-ZPass, which serves much of the East Coast region, are more difficult because they involve millions of individual customers, along with their banking and credit card information.

“When you get into technology systems and sharing customer data, it’s pretty tricky,” Bell said. “We’re still in talks with other agencies nationwide. We don’t have dates for any of those agreements at this point.”