Charging, Tolling & Road Pricing

Q-Free has won a contract, valued $3.8m (£2.1m), to supply tags to an Australian road operator over a three-year period. Interlink Roads manages and develops the M5 South-West Motorway and the E-way tolling business. Silje Troseth, general manager Australia, said: “We are very pleased to continue our relationship with Interlink Roads and ensure supply of Q-Free’s high performing tags in Australia.”

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) has selected Kapsch TrafficCom (Kapsch) to upgrade toll systems on the interstate 15 (I-15) Express Lanes and the State Route 125 toll road (South Bay Expressway). The project aims to provide drivers with more seamless journeys that feature modern technology and streamlined maintenance and operation activities. It is expected to be completed in the second half of 2019. Through the agreement, Kapsch will replace all in-lane equipment with a software support

2,000 Washington-based volunteers are taking part in an Emovis project which will replace the gas tax with a pay-per-mile travelled charge. The results of the year-long trial will help shape the state’s future transportation funding policy. Called the Washington Road User Charge Pilot Project, it will also test multi-jurisdictional charging by relying on the location-aware capabilities of on-board mileage recording devices. The simulated charges applied to trips will vary depending on the location of each

Q-Free will supply tags to The Expressway Authority of Thailand in a contract valued approximately ฿68m (£1.5m). Håkon Volldal, CEO of Q-Free, said: “This order confirms the high technical performance of Q-Free’s tags and our ability to supply significant volumes on short notice.”

Norwegian supplier of ITS products Q-Free Open Roads (Q-Free) has been chosen as a sub- contractor for two US tolling projects in Washington and San Diego, valued $4.4m (£3.1m). These deals also include five year maintenance agreements and work will begin immediately. Håkon Volldal, president and CEO of Q-Free Asa, said: "We are pleased to see continued growth of our industry-leading image based solutions in North America. These two contracts clearly demonstrate our competitiveness in the market and build

Kistler Group (Kistler) will showcase its KiTraffic Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) solutions at this year’s Intertraffic in Amsterdam from the 20-23 March 2018. The innovations are intended to support road owners and authorities in road and traffic monitoring, weight enforcement and weight-based tolling. The KiTraffic Plus, a WIM solution for automated road monitoring, comes with Lineas quartz sensors and is said to measure vehicle loads at different speeds on a range of lanes. It uses two to eight sensors per l

Tulsa-based OmniAir consortium has certified two devices for tolling interoperability from Star Systems International (SSI). The Vektra Windshield Sticker Tag and Solana Passive Transponder can be mounted on either a vehicle’s windscreen or headlamp. SSI supplies passive tolling devices across the world and to members of the 6C Toll Operators Coalition as well as other tolling operators within the United States. Stephen Lockhart, CTO, for SSI, said: “Star Systems International is committed to bringing

The UK's Intelligent Transport Society has told the Department for Transport (DfT) that there is no technical barrier to the distance-based charging of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in response to a consultation on reforming the HGV road user levy. A range of experts agreed that the technology already exists, with Germany's truck tolling scheme implemented in 2005. The options for technology range from automatic number plate recognition or toll tags to a solution based on board tolling unit as well as the us

Alan Dron looks at why congestion charging and other similar schemes are so controversial in North America. In August, Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York State, described congestion charging for the city as “an idea whose time had come,” according to the Bloomberg wire service. In October, he announced a ‘Fix NYC’ advisory panel to study methods of easing congestion on the city’s streets. Although Cuomo did not specifically mention congestion charging when setting up the panel, he said it would study