Charging, Tolling & RUC

Teri England, Diamond Consulting Services Ltd, describes the E-470's switchover to all-electronic toll collection. In June 2007, the E-470 Public Highway Authority made the business decision to transition to an All-Electronic Toll Collection (AETC) system - in other words, become a cashless road.

Toll system suppliers are considering service structures and technologies needed to address issues of social exclusion in open road tolling. Jason Barnes asked Telvent's Pat McGowan to explain moves to address the needs of all toll customers

France-headquartered Egis Projects has announced the acquisition of Dutch-based company Transpass which provides services to European heavy goods vehicle (HGV) fleets in electronic toll collection services on behalf of almost all concessionaires and operators in Europe (TollCollect in Germany, Asfinag in Austria, Autostrade in Italy, TIS-PL in France, etc.).

When TagMaster launched the new XT series readers and ID-tags addressing the EPC Gen 2 specification during 2010, they were well received in the European market with a number of successful projects. A XT-2us model of this reader, designed for US specification, is now being introduced to the US market. This new reader family and ID-tags extend the TagMaster product portfolio with support for the ISO 18000-6 type C standard, called EPC Gen 2, providing automatic identification at up to 5m. According to the co

Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) has awarded a tender to four consortia - Beijing Watchdata System; Watchdata Technologies; IBM Singapore and ST Electronics (Info-Comm Systems); and NCS, MHI Engine System Asia and Kapsch TrafficCom - with each of them being given seed funding of US$0.8 million for the development of the next-generation electronic road pricing (ERP) system.

Kapsch TrafficCom IVHS has been selected by the E-ZPass Group, a coalition of 24 toll agencies in 14 US states, as vendor for a new 10-year technology and services contracts, subject to individual agency approval processes.

Efkon has supplied Austria's Asfinag Maut Service with mobile systems that help to automatically identify toll violators. In Austria and in other countries, the toll sticker system is widely used as the tolling method for vehicles with a maximum permissible gross weight under 3.5t because it is easy to use and economical.

Federal Signal Technologies (FSTech) and its Turkish integration partner, Litum Technologies, have been awarded a nationwide contract by Vendeka Bilgi Teknolojileri to transition Turkey's in-lane electronic toll collection (ETC) system infrastructure to ISO 18000-6C. With 580 lanes, it will be the first electronic toll collection project using passive UHF RFID technology in Europe.

A new project is under way in Minnesota, investigating whether smartphones are technically and publicly acceptable for use in road user charging. Jason Barnes reports. In Minnesota, trials have been launched to determine whether smartphones are technologically viable and acceptable to the public for distance based road user charging (RUC). The Midwestern US state has engaged with Battelle to explore RUC technology options in a project which falls under the auspices of the US Federal Connected Vehicle progra

Sirit Corporation, a Federal Signal company and a global provider of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, has been awarded a contract by Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to supply its industry leading IDentity 5200 readers and tags for the SR 520 bridge in Seattle, as well as the existing SR 167 HOT lanes. The initial contract is valued at approximately US$2.8 million.