PORTAGE, Ind. (AP) — The private operator of the Indiana Toll Road anticipates an electronic tolling system will be ready for the full highway in April, nearly a year after it first expected it to be in place but months before its deadline with the state.

Indiana Toll Road Concession Co. has had unexpected troubles come up in working to install electronic tolling for the full length of the 157-mile highway, delaying what it first projected as a mid-2007 completion, company spokesman Matt Pierce said.

The company's lease agreement with the state mandates full installation by June 29.

"We feel very confident we'll make it," Pierce said.

Electronic tolling, by which motorists with special devices they buy for their vehicles can bypass toll booths, began in June on a 23-mile stretch from the Illinois state line to Portage.

The startup of electronic tolling on that section resulted in lines of a mile or more at some toll booths as motorists struggled with unclear signs and some system malfunctions.

Those problems largely have been eliminated, said Leigh Morris, whom Gov. Mitch Daniels named this month as the toll road's executive director.

"We've seen it working very well to the extent it is in," said Morris, the former mayor of Portage. "Obviously we're looking forward to it moving forward at as a rapid a pace as possible."

Under its contract with the state, ITR can increase tolls for cars and motorcycles once the electronic tolling system, known as I-Zoom, is fully installed. The toll for running the full length of the toll road will go to $8 from the current $4.65.

Those using electronic tolling will get a discount, so they will pay essentially what they are paying now.

That discount led to a dispute between Illinois and Indiana last year just before the introduction of I-Zoom. When the Illinois Tollway Authority learned its I-PASS users would not get the discount, it threatened to yank 90,000 I-PASS transponders from Indiana drivers who used them to get discounts on the Illinois Tollway.

Just before Indiana's electronic tolling was switched on, ITR Concession extended the I-Zoom discount to users of I-PASS and other transponders.

The Daniels administration in 2006 finalized the 75-year lease of the toll road to a consortium of Spanish company Cintra and Australia's Macquarie Infrastructure Group. The consortium, which formed ITR Concession, has paid the state $3.8 billion and will collect all the highway's toll revenue over the term of the lease.

At the toll plaza closest to the Illinois state line, about 52 percent of rush-hour drivers are using electronic tolling, according to ITR Concession figures. That has increased the number of cars and trucks the plaza handles an hour by about 14.5 percent.

"We are truly moving people through the lanes faster," Pierce said. "That's the whole purpose of putting it in. Not just because it's in our contract."