AURORA, Colo. -- The approximately 30 toll booths along the 47-mile stretch of E-470 may soon be left in the dust.

The E-470 Highway Authority is now exploring the possibility of removing all toll booths and coin baskets. Instead of stopping to pay, drivers without an EXpressToll transponder would receive a bill in the mail.

The highway authority said seven out of 10 drivers on E-470 already use the transponders, and stopping every third driver to collect doesn't make economic sense.

"For E-470 it would be an operational cost savings. Right now, we spend about 25 to 30 cents per cash transaction to process each one of those. And we spend about 8 to 10 cents to process each electronic payment," said E-470 spokeswoman Jo Ellen Snell.

If the changes were to happen, E-470 would be one of only a handful of toll highways in the world using what's called full, open-road tolling or F.O.R.T. It is essentially an electronic toll collection system without toll plazas where drivers are charged the toll without having to stop, slow down or stay in a given lane.

Other tolling facilities like this are being used in Dallas, Houston and Toronto, Canada.

Almost 463,000 transponders are in use on E-470.

The highway authority is still studying the idea, but would essentially use cameras to photograph license plates -- and send invoices to the registered address of the vehicle. The owner would have a certain period of time to pay the bill before being fined.

Snell said the highway authority would like to remove all toll booths by the end of 2009.