Middle East Looks to road charging for congestion relief

On the eve of the 553 Gulf Traffic show in Dubai, 1697 ITS Arab secretary general and Innova Consulting managing director Zeina Nazer reviews prospects for road user charging in the Middle East and North Africa

Road systems in most major cities of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are heavily overloaded; impacting on economic growth. MENA governments recognise this and are developing plans to tackle the challenge.

The region needs alternative financing to fund construction of new roads and maintenance and operation of existing networks. There is also a recognised need to encourage more people to use public transport. ITS technology can help MENA states tackle these challenges and in some parts of the region, it is already doing so.

Successful projects in large European cities have proven that congestion charging is a necessary next step to encourage more travellers to use public transport. Consequently some Arab states have initiated debates on the feasibility of congestion charging or road user charging (RUC) as part of wider ITS strategies. This is the case in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Morocco.

The RUC and tolling market in MENA is driven by a growing awareness of toll collection as a sustainable fund raising source for development of infrastructure; and an increasing shift from manual to electronic toll collection (ETC) systems.

The general consensus is that the feasibility of congestion charging or RUC will depend largely on demonstrating that any potential solution will not discriminate against any social group. There will also need to be clear demonstration of economical viability and sustainability.

This will require the right mix of public transport and a managed road network.

Some MENA states, such as Dubai, already have ETC as a stated element of policy with a defined roadmap of infrastructure investment, traffic management centres and real-time traffic and travel information. Others are well down a path to decisions on deployment of congestion charging or RUC.

Applications in the MENA region

Examples of road tolling projects in place in the MENA region, making use of manual or automatic toll collection, include the King Fahd Causeway connecting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the Cairo-Alexandria Toll Road and other schemes in Morocco and Tunisia. Use of ETC is in evidence on the Turkish road network and the Dubai 1700 Salik highway, which can be considered as the first deployment of congestion charging in MENA, although limited to a corridor.

6700 Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) introduced its 'Salik' ETC scheme in July 2007. Salik aims to ease traffic flow in the city and encourage road users to consider other travel options including Dubai's well funded public transport network. Dubai has taken regional leadership in the use of RUC and has the potential to join the ranks of other best-inclass charging and tolling scheme operators worldwide, including those in Stockholm and London.

Elsewhere, Abu Dhabi's Department of Transport has recently completed a feasibility study on congestion charging for the city of Abu Dhabi, so it can be seen that further use of road pricing schemes aimed at reducing peak demand are likely in the region in future.

RUC opportunities

There are several opportunities for RUC in MENA including the following developments:
● Dubai Salik tag turnkey system: due as current contract ends in 2012; opportunities for road operators, technology suppliers and system integrators;
● Turkey Toll Roads planned PPP scheme: opportunities for road operators, technology suppliers and system integrators;
● Abu Dhabi congestion charging implementation.
● Yemen - Djibouti Causeway (currently at feasibility study): $25bn, 29km causeway between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula crossing the Red Sea;
● Syria, BOT Toll Road linking Lebanon to Iraq and Turkey to Jordan (feasibility study);
● Kuwait 4th and 8th Ring Roads (currently being upgraded).

The benefits

Implementation of RUC or congestion charging is perhaps the only sustainable approach to demand management as an effective means for encouraging adoption of modes of travel other than private motoring. Overall, it is clear that the focus of transport planning and operations in many countries is now on efficient use of road networks with a reliable and convenient public transport system. RUC can play its part in integrated transport strategies for the long term.

Depending largely on the toll charged, congestion charging can reduce traffic levels significantly. For example, in London an initial 20% decrease in traffic volume was recorded. In Singapore, city centre traffic volume has reduced by 30%.

A cordon toll trial in Stockholm reduced traffic on principal thoroughfares by more than 20% during morning and afternoon peak periods.

Pricing projects whose principal objective is to cover infrastructure financing (Bergen, Oslo) have delivered relatively small effects on traffic volumes due to low toll rates. In Oslo, for example, the number of cars passing through toll ring plazas was reduced by approximately 10%. Direct and visible use of revenues collected has been shown to increase public acceptance. In the case of Stockholm, demonstrated commitment to investing in infrastructure and public transport turned opposition into positive support after launch of a pilot scheme.

Securing public acceptability

Despite being a powerful instrument for fighting urban traffic congestion, RUC has faced a hostile political and public environment, due to a lack of confidence in its promised results and a fear of its political consequences. This is contributing to growing congestion problems in most large cities.

Translation of plans for congestion charging into publicly acceptable and economically feasible schemes will demand good business cases. An RUC system that is either uneconomical to operate at charge rates applied or does not instill the required shift in behaviour is likely to collapse.

Based on principles of efficient congestion pricing put forward by William Vickrey (1914-1996), winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, RUC should be at an acceptable cost to users and scheme owners while being economically efficient to operate. The charging and enforcement processes must be accurate, reliable and fair. Participation should be voluntary with several means to pay the charge and finally it should offer levels of privacy acceptable to road users.

Standardisation and interoperability

In general, ETC has been one of the most widely adopted and economically successful applications of ITS in both developed and emerging economies. One reason for its attractiveness and success is that it helps to generate revenue by eliminating delays at toll barriers and by generally reducing congestion on toll roads and bridges. It can also help reduce labour costs and make collection more reliable.

However, if a country or region has many different toll systems, it may be inconvenient or expensive for drivers to sign up to each system and acquire multiple transponders or to maintain several accounts. Therefore, commercial users in Europe have pushed for standardisation across toll systems. In addition, some toll authorities have recognised the potential efficiencies of joining with others for joint operation of processing centres and other administrative functions.
The MENA market
Total revenues from road toll and RUC collection in the MENA region were estimated at $1 billion in 2010. This equates to 0.8% of global toll collection revenues, estimated at $125 billion in 2010.  At an estimated growth rate of 15%, MENA's tolling revenues are expected to be $2.1 billion in 2015 and $5.1 billion in 2020.
The only region where standardisation has led to interoperable and multi-vendor supported systems is Europe. The 1701 CEN DSRC (dedicated short range communication) standards have ensured that all tolling systems deployed in Europe are technically interoperable through a common DSRC interface. These standards are supported by a large number of equipment manufacturers, proven by the multitude of companies offering solutions and services to the European RUC market.

In Japan and regions of the US, interoperability has been secured through industrial de-facto standards. Users experience a uniform service, but these markets demonstrate a lack of multiple equipment manufacturers, prices are relatively inflated and the development of new services is sparse.

Most markets outside Japan and the US have chosen to select CEN DSRC as the normative standard for RUC systems.

These include Australia, Indonesia, South Africa and most South American countries.

The US tried unsuccessfully over a period of 10 years to standardise DSRC transponder and communication protocol technology at 915 MHz. Eventually, the 324 US Department of Transportation mandated a transponder technology standard, but this was aimed primarily at helping commercial vehicle operators' electronic presentation of credentials and safety information at state and national borders, not at standardising toll collection. To date, no company has been willing to manufacture transponders to this standard. The effort to standardize DSRC at 5.9 GHz has focused primarily on vehicle safety applications rather than toll collection.

In the MENA region, an effort is being led by ITS Arab aiming for regionally harmonised standards for ETC. For this task to be successful, interoperability across all countries in the region is required and initially the focus of attention must be on the institutional and administrative aspects of ETC. Once standards are harmonised, selection of a common technology for ETC communications becomes possible.

ETC systems do not become interoperable only by being technically compatible; two toll systems with identical technology will only be interoperable if they can arrive at administrative agreements for recognising toll tags and appropriate distribution of revenues. This is a challenging task, but successful interoperability has been established between Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Austria through the 1702 EasyGO system, in Australia through cooperation between toll service providers and in Sao Paulo through the common operator CGMP.