Charging, Tolling & Road Pricing

The Northern Capital Highway (NCH) consortium has been named the preferred bidder in the tender for the central section of St Petersburg’s Western High-Speed Diameter (WHSD) project. Should NCH win the tender process it will build and then operate the entire stretch of the toll road. The consortium comprises VTB Capital and Gazprombank from Russia in partnership with Italian company Astaldi and Turkish firm Ictas Insaat.

The Austrian Traffic Club (VCÖ) which is the principal organisation in the country working for environmentally sustainable, socially just, and economically efficient mobility, has called for the introduction of truck tolls for rural highways. The organisation says that trucks wear down roads 35,000 times more than cars and also claims that in 2010 truck transport caused road infrastructure-related costs of US$4.78 billion but it paid only $3.46 via tolls and taxes.

Motorway toll systems of Slovakia and Austria may be interconnected as part of the planned European interoperability. Operators of the national systems, SkyToll of Slovakia and Asfinag of Austria, have expressed interest in cooperation, saying that they will hold further, more detailed negotiations. SkyToll claims that the satellite system in Slovakia is ready for interoperability with the systems of the neighbouring countries and any changes can be implemented quickly.

Efkon and its advertising agency Rubikon have received the international WebAward from the Web Marketing Association for the development of the company’s website.

A new incentive plan proposed by Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection (FETC) to provide free new eTag units to non-electronic toll collection (ETC) users from February 2012 has been agreed by the National Freeway Bureau (NFB). Non-ETC users will get the free eTag units once they have deposited US$17.39 in their unit account. In addition, a free switch from the old on-board units (OBUs) to the new eTag units will be given to existing ETC users. The new eTag ETC system will be rolled out in February 2012 an

Firms from China and Japan will carry out toll road construction projects in Indonesia in partnership with local companies. The Chinese companies CSEC and CHEC will team up with Indonesian firm Hutama Karya for the Medan-Kualanamu-Tebing Tinggi toll road project. This 17km toll road project is due for completion in early 2014 and will cost in the order of US$152 million to complete. A loan worth $137 million is being provided for the project from Chinese sources while over $15 million will be provided by th

Germany's conservative CSU party has said that it will issue a draft bill on a new road toll for cars in autumn 2011. It says that even if car taxes were lowered, extending the national tolling system from trucks to cars, would raise billions of euros over the next few years. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel is on record as saying that no tolls for cars will be introduced during the current legislative period.

In an effort to reduce congestion in a busy corridor for motorists and commercial freight carriers, Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) appointed TransCore as the lead integrator on a project to convert the Newark Toll Plaza on I-95, adding two new electronic highway speed lanes on both the north and south bound plazas. Plaza throughput is now about to jump from 250-300 transactions per lane per hour to an estimated 2,000. The US$32 million “shovel ready” project was fully funded through the Amer