Supplement to

THIN KING
HIG HW AYS
Volume 3 Issue 4
December 2008

The international road pricing and

electronic toll collection review

ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN,

ONE GIANT LEAP FOR ROAD
USER CHARGING...
Joaquin Cosmen Schortmann
and Bern Grush herald the
launch of GMAR

the Advanced transportation management

INTELLIGENT
H 3 B MEDIA

policy • strategy • technology

finance • innovation • implementation
choice integration • interoperability
 Xxxxx

Vehicle Separation
OSI LASERSCAN.
WE FIT INTO ANY ENVIRONMENT.
Axle Counting A dynamic industry requires dynamic solutions—extremely flexible options that can change when
your needs change, quickly and efficiently. Options that are precise, upgradable, and able to work with legacy
elements and emerging technologies. By deploying the AutoSenseTM or Idris® products either individually
Vehicle Classification or in tandem, you’ll soon realize lower life cycle costs, increased accuracy and increased reliability.
To see how well we can fit into your environment, contact Eric Carr, eric.carr@osi-ls.com today.

Vehicle Enforcement
Security Camera Trigger

Data Collection and

Transmission Idris is a registered trademark of Diamond Consulting Services Ltd.

AutoSense is a product line of OSI LaserScan focused on the development and deployment
of sensor and system solutions for the toll and traffic management markets worldwide. www.osi-laserscan.com
 Foreword Thinking

Cheer up, it
Kevin Borras is
publishing director
of H3B Media and
editor-in-chief of
Thinking Highways
could be worse
and ETC, etc. To
contact him, email
The ETC, etc guide to not letting the global economic
kevin@h3bmedia.com downturn apply to you.
No, really. It could.Things Avenue, there was a more than of this is ever going to get off
could definitely be worse. healthy ETC-flavoured the ground (literally in their
Given that the entire representation and some of the case). Talking of finance, as we
civilised world seems to be more energetic sessions were were, Ken Philmus and Bob
suffering from the effects of a congestion pricing-oriented. McQueen have both written
massive financial meltdown By the time you have finished stirring pieces about a
where even countries go bust reading our fifth iteration of cashless future (a deliberate
(it was always thought to be a ETC, etc you will, I’m sure, be one, not in the Icelandic
bad omen when banks mightily relieved that the sense). Ken focuses on how
announced redundancies but world has looked down the much it costs, in toll transaction
we’re now at a stage where back of the global sofa and terms, to handle money while
Iceland’s entire banking sector found enough money amidst Bob laments the end of the toll
has collapsed), we’d like to the amorphous balls of fluff booth, the one point of contact
offer you some form of refuge and peas (if the back of my a toll operator has with its
from the gathering storm. sofa is any indication) to keep customers.
We’re nice like that. investing in measures to solve Add into the mix Norbert
It can’t be all gloom and the burgeoning weight and Schindler’s fascinating opinion
doom now can it, if this issue of environmental impacts of piece, Steinar Furan’s look at
ETC, etc is anything to go by. traffic. the roots of the age-old
The electronic toll collection Bern Grush and Joaquin interoperability issue, Bob
and road pricing market would Cosmen Schortmann, for Edelstein’s PPP warning,
seem to be pretty vibrant if the instance, are looking at the Duncan Matheson’s EETS plea,
articles we’ve included here just-established GNSS Mike Hayward’s footballing
are a good indication of the Metering Association for Road analogies, Leonardo
health of this particular sector. User Charging (GMAR) to Anceschi’s Italian lesson,
The exhibition floor of quickly become the Miguel Martinez’s Dutch
November’s ITS World association for ‘our’ section of experience and Andy
Congress in New York was the global navigation satellite Graham’s Top of the Pops
certainly not lacking in systems market. Their article, pastiche (not to mention Grush
companies from this neck of “We Have Lift Off” goes into and Kosic’s take on accuracy)
the woods and although the the great detail on pages 4-8 and you have several hours
week was rightly dominated but the bottom line is simple: worth of distraction from the
by the VII demos on 11th without financial support none impending disaster... E
Editor-in-Chief ETC etc,, a twice-yearly supplement to thinking Highways, is published
Kevin Borras Visualisation by H3B Media Ltd in the UK. ISSN 1753 4348
Sales and Marketing Tom Waldschmidt
Thinking Highways is published quarterly in two editions – North America and
Luis Hill, Tim Guest Conferences and Events Europe/Rest of the World - and is available on subscription at £30/€40 (Europe/RoW) and
Design and Layout Odile Pignier US$50 (North America). Distributed in the USA by DSW, 75 Aberdeen Road, Emigsville PA
Phoebe Bentley, Kevin Borras Subscriptions and Circulation 17318-0437. Periodicals postage paid at Emigsville PA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
Sub-Editor and Proofreader Pilarin Harvey-Granell THINKING HIGHWAYS, 13705 North Ivy Lake Road, Chillicothe, IL 61523, USA.
Maria Vasconcelos Financial Director
Although due care has been taken to ensure that the content of this publication is accurate
Senior Editorial Advisors Martin Brookstein and up-to-date, the publisher can accept no liability for errors and omissions. Unless otherwise
Bern Grush, Jack Opiola, Andrew Editorial and Advertising stated, this publication has not tested products or services that are described herein, and
Pickford, Harold Worrall H3B Media Ltd, Managing Director/CEO their inclusion does not imply any form of endorsement. By accepting advertisements in this
Contributors to this issue 15 Onslow Gardens, Luis Hill publication, the publisher does not warrant their accuracy, nor accept responsibility for their
contents. The publisher welcomes unsolicited manuscripts and illustrations but can accept no
Leonardo Anceschi, Joaquin Cosmen Wallington, liability for their safe return.
Schortmann, Robert Edelstein, Steinar Surrey Publishing Director © 2008 H3B Media Ltd. All rights reserved.
Furan, Andy Graham, Bern Grush, Mike
Hayward, Michael Kosic,Miguel Angel
SM6 9QL, UK
Tel +44 (0)208 254 9406
Kevin Borras The views and opinions of the authors are not necessarily those of H3B Media Ltd.
Reproduction (in whole or in part) of any text, photograph or illustration contained in this
Martinez Olague, Dave Marples, Duncan Fax +44 (0)208 647 0045 publication without the written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.
Matheson, Bob McQueen, Ken Philmus,
Norbert Schindler, Paul Vorster
Email info@h3bmedia.com
www.thinkinghighways.com
Printed in the UK by The Manson Group

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 No 4 01

 CONTENTS
COVER STORY
04 Bern Grush and Joaquin Cosmen Schortmann
on the background, launch and objectives
of GMAR
Cover Story Cover Story

We have
BERN GRUSH and JOAQUIN COSMEN SCHORTMANN are
working together to establish GMAR as the primary
association for the GNSS road tolling sector. But what is
GMAR? What does it stand for? And who else is involved?
lift off...
We both presented papers at the New York ITS World The demand for road use charging (road toll-
Congress in November 2008 and while there we ing) is increasing. Whether for reasons of sus-
heard from a considerable number of speakers tainable funding, congestion management,
about the use of global navigation satellite systems green house gas curtailment or concerns for
(GNSS) to meter road use for tolling. dependence on oil, the likelihood is very high
We observed that while there are many areas of agree- that most roads in many countries will be tolled
ment regarding the direction this tech- in the next two decades based
nology is headed and the reasons why it “GMV and on when and how much they
will eventually dominate, no other
speakers mentioned the need for a
Skymeter have are driven.
While there are a variety of
defined set of performance require- collaborated to ways to configure such tolling
ments for road charging systems. We
believe this issue is a critical one to
establish GMAR” systems, there is no known
method of managing this vari-
those authorities seeking to acquire such systems. We ety or volume of tolling activities that is more
also think this is critical to the health of our fledgling flexible or cost effective than metering tech-
industry. nologies based on global navigation satellite
To this end, our two companies, GMV and Skymeter, systems (GNSS) such as GPS and Galileo.
have collaborated to establish an industry association,
GNSS Metering Association for Road Use Charging
(GMAR), with the purpose of defining critical perform-
ance requirements for these systems.

46 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 47

CASHLESS TRANSACTIONS (take 1)

10 Ken Philmus on the hidden (and rising) cost
of money in the toll collection world

ITALY
14 Convincing the Italian public that congestion
charging is a good idea is no easy task, as p42
Leonardo Anceschi explains

INTEROPERABILITY
18 Steinar Furan looks at some historical parallels
to find where the difficulty in realising the
concept of interoperability originates CONGESTION CHARGING
42 Andy Graham counts down the congestion
SOUTH AFRICA charging top 10
20 Dr Paul Vorster on how South Africa is giving a
much-needed makeover to its public transport DUTCH ROAD PRICING
fare collection system 46 Miguel Angel Martinez Olague reflects on the
ABvM from an industry standpoint
COMMENT
23 It’s Pricing versus Charging, there’s five CASHLESS TRANSACTIONS (take 2)
minutes to go and it’s 0-0. Mike Hayward talks 50 Bob McQueen, with handkerchief at the ready,
us through the closing stages steels himself to bid a fond farewell to two of
his favourite things. Toll booths... and cash
PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
26 Dr Robert Edelstein searches for PPP’s TECHNOLOGY
consistency of purpose 54 We have the technology but what are we
going to do with it? Dave Marples hopes that
OPINION PIECE reinventing the wheel isn’t part of the plan
30 Norbert Schindler’s observations on the
current state of play in the tolling market, COMMENT
informed by his enlightening week in New York 58 Duncan Matheson on the European
in November Commission’s commitment to EETS

ROAD USE METERING 64 Advertisers Index

36 Michael Kosic and Bern Grush define exactly
what is meant by ‘accurate’
Are you looking for a solution that facilitates intelligent safety and mobility applications, forming
a platform for VII and ITS solutions, ideal for tolling and HOT lane management, offering lower
costs and greater value, superior performance with reduced infrastructure density, scalable in
size and functionality, adaptable, easily enforceable, revenue-maximizing? It’s here. 5.9 GHz
WAVE. Join us at the 15 th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems, New York City,
Nov. 16-20, 2008. Booth 537 | www.kapsch.net

We make your traffic flow.

At 5.9 GHz WAVE.
Cover Story

BERN GRUSH and JOAQUIN COSMEN SCHORTMANN are

working together to establish GMAR as the primary
association for the GNSS road tolling sector. But what is
GMAR? What does it stand for? And who else is involved?

We each presented papers related to GNSS tolling at The demand for road use charging (road toll-
the New York ITS World Congress in November 2008 ing) is increasing. Whether for reasons of sus-
and we were pleased that a considerable number of tainable funding, congestion management,
others there spoke about the use of global naviga- green house gas curtailment or concerns for
tion satellite systems (GNSS) to meter road use for dependence on oil, the likelihood is very high
tolling. We observed that there is general agreement that most roads in many countries will be tolled
regarding the direction this technol- in the next two decades based
ogy is taking and we heard reasons “GMV and on when and how much they
why it will eventually dominate.
Unfortunately, no other speakers
Skymeter have are driven.
While there are a variety of
mentioned the need for a defined set of collaborated to ways to configure such tolling
performance requirements for road
charging systems. We believe this issue
establish GMAR” systems, there is no known
method of managing this vari-
is a critical one to those authorities seeking to acquire ety or volume of tolling activities that is more
such systems.We also think this is critical to the health of flexible or cost effective than metering tech-
our fledgling industry. nologies based on global navigation satellite
To this end, our two companies, GMV and Skymeter, systems (GNSS) such as GPS and Galileo.
have collaborated to establish an industry association,
GNSS Metering Association for Road Use Charging
(GMAR), with the purpose of defining critical perform-
ance requirements for these systems.

04 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Cover Story

We have
lift off...

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 05

Cover Story

The observation
As of the end of 2008, there are a number of GNSS-based
systems on offer, only one of which has been proven in
extended operation. For numerous reasons, independ-
ent of the purpose of GMAR, the market place demands
more than one such system design and more than one
system manufacturer. These systems are new, compli-
cated, expensive, and can be arranged in a number of
ways – some of which may not yet be known. The GNSS
road-metering methods currently deployed and prom-
ises being made are various and difficult to compare.
Worse, benchmarking efforts are also variable and
not comparable across tests that have been made. As an
example, two refereed tests, one in 2006 in Western EU
and another in 2008 in Asia, showed two products from
two companies with average pricing variation of 0.86
per cent and 0.7 per cent, respectively. Each was the top
performer in their test context – London and Seoul.
Unfortunately, there is no way to ascertain whether these
two “scores” are comparable, nor is it possible to prove
that these two scores would be predictive in other urban
environments. This means that a procurer would have to
undertake another battery of tests and even then might
be unsure of the applicability of those tests throughout
their intended geography of application.
The newness, size, and criticality of this market leads
to complex specification, tendering, bidding, analysis,
procurement, and validation. Ultimately, the creation of
effective service level agreements (SLAs) is at risk.

The opportunity
To reduce this risk, GMAR is developing a critical set of
performance requirements as a guide to both buyers
and vendors. These are intended for use throughout the
process from specification through the lifetime of an
SLA so that performance-related features and charac-
terizations can be mutually understood, described and
validated by all parties including any independent
party that may be engaged to compare, certify, accredit
or negotiate during and after the acquisition process.
This set of principles will encompass, at least:
1. The development of definitions, language and
glossaries (borrowed from existing work where possi-
ble) that sets common communication among vendors
and buyers of GNSS-related systems that include meter-
ing for road use.
2. To set qualitative and testable performance
requirements, against which products and services may
be compared. We believe that these performance
requirements are particularly critical for defending evi-
dentiary weight, and potentially legal admissibility.
Further, GMAR will describe qualitative and testable
standards of performance for the technology to protect
privacy.
3. The definition of test frameworks so that such
systems can be validated with respect of the specified
performance requirements. The definition of the way a
requirement is validated is as important as the defini-
tion of the requirement itself.
These principles address several elements funda-
mental to the success of a GNSS road-use metering sys-

06 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Cover Story

tem. These technology-mediated elements must be in ment or otherwise manage the error budget for naviga-
place in order to provide a reliable, liability-critical, tion-grade GNSS to address site-specific errors in
payment-metering service that is acceptable to govern- preparation for road-use charge calculations, and, sec-
ments, road providers and motorists who will rely on ond, because the requirements for system reliability are
them. independent from the technology used to ensure that
Other program elements such as fairness and cost reliability. Because there may be any number of ways to
effectiveness, while critical to acceptability and system augment GNSS to develop a liability-critical road-use
success, are beyond GMAR’s scope. Furthermore many meter, the description of these performance require-
other important system and program issues, such as ments needs formal mathematical definitions and
interoperability, data and system interfaces, and the associated test frameworks rather than design
like, are already described in existing standards such as advisories.
CEN/ISO 17575, CESARE IV, and RCI. These will not be These tests must be able to compare systems that rely
discussed, except by reference in a GMAR guideline. on different underlying technology methods, i.e.,
regardless of whether they depend on techniques such
The outline as map-matching or dead-reckoning and so on. Such
The first three definitions we are concerned with are tests must be described so as to be executed by an inde-
performance requirements analogous to the Position, pendent third party, and whose analysis both buyer and
Navigation and Time (PNT) system performance param- vendor can agree on.
eters: Accuracy, Integrity, and Availability. The fourth • Charging Accuracy. In a PNT system, position
PNT parameter, continuity, is essentially subsumed error (i.e. the difference between estimated position
under availability for GMAR’s purposes and is not and actual position) varies dynamically with the time
required in this formulation. For the purposes of this and place depending on many factors. Thus Accuracy is
guideline, these three reliability requirements will be usually statistically characterized and a commonly
framed in terms of charging rather than the source accepted parameter is the 95th percentile of the posi-
framework of a PNT system. tion error distribution; this parameter is usually also
This is a critical distinction for two reasons: first, a referred to as the 95 per cent error where error means
mobility payment metering service must either aug- the difference between estimated positions and actual

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 No 4 07

Cover Story

“GMAR is
developing a
critical set of
performance
requirements as a
guide to buyers and
JCS
vendors”

positions. In an RUC system, we propose to use an analo- that the probability of the false identification of a zone
gous definition but in this case applied to the relative (i.e., the user is falsely identified as having been within
charging error magnitude. Thus Charging Accuracy is the zone when he was not) is even lower.
defined as the 95th percentile of the charging error dis- • Charging Availability. In a PNT formulation,
tribution (i.e. the charging error magnitude that 95 per availability is the probability that the system is provid-
cent of the RUC charges fall within), where relative ing position data within required accuracy and integrity
charging error means the difference between the RUC requirements at a given time and place. For a road-use
system-computed charge and the actual charge due meter we propose to define Charging Availability as the
divided by that actual charge due. portion of time in which the RUC system is delivering
• Charging Integrity. Integrity metrics extend charges within required accuracy and integrity require-
system accuracy characterization. While Accuracy and ments. As an example, one of the critical system ele-
Integrity are complementary, they are critically differ- ments to be addressed under the rubric of Charging
ent parameters. While Accuracy provides a statistical Availability is the irksome matter of “time to first fix”
characterization of the error distribution, when this dis- (TTFF). These three concepts will be further refined and
tribution is not Gaussian, Accuracy does not provide mathematically formulated in order to be able to use
any guarantee that the error in a particular measure- them for validation purposes.
ment is below a certain limit. Thus Integrity measures The reason road authorities, system/service provid-
the trust which may be placed on the correctness of ers and road users need to specify charging accuracy,
information supplied by the total system. In the case of a integrity and availability is because that is the only way
RUC system we propose to use a definition analogous to to protect their interests, limit liability and provide non-
another used by the PNT community: Charging Integ- refutability for the scheme charges. In other words,
rity is defined as the probability (close to 1) with which while charging accuracy and availability are essential
the system can ensure that for a given charge the rela- to ensure to both the authority and service provider that
tive error is below a specified positive limit (to guard most vehicles are detected and correctly charged on
against overcharging). average, charging integrity ensures the user and the
In the case of a time-distance-place charging system authority that it is almost impossible for there to be large
with different charging fees per zone, integrity involves overcharges on any particular bill.
two different and essential requirements: on one hand The validation of the performance requirements that
the capacity to identify that relative charging error is not is essential for the acceptance and later certification of
above a certain value (e.g. 0.1 per cent of the true value) the system is a complex process since the actual
with a very high probability (value to be set by the performance of the system depends on a set of
authority). On the other hand, the system must ensure variables that change with time and that cannot be

08 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Cover Story

controlled. This is of special concern for GNSS-based • Privacy which will be defined as a spectrum,
systems. including absolute anonymity, virtual anonymity,
The design of trials is a critical procedure for system enforced privacy, voluntary privacy, and transparency.
validation. Because performance is affected by the Characteristics for each level of privacy will be pro-
physical context of the vehicle (whether it is in urban/ vided, but the choice of privacy level to be enjoyed is a
road scenarios, whether or not it entered a zone where matter of policy and preference, which we will not
special tariffs apply, etc) trials should cover a broad comment on.
variety of scenarios. For example, a major concern is
related to overcharging associated with incorrect iden- Next steps
tification of a zone (e.g. to erroneously apply a higher Upon completing a more detailed initial draft of the core
tariff to a vehicle that is not using a particular infrastruc- principles for this guideline, by the end of 2008, we will
ture), trials should specifically assess the performance invite six or eight credible experts – from industry, gov-
of vehicles while proximate, but outside those zones. ernment and universities – to review this draft. This step
However, for testing of some critical performance var- will not only invite a critique of what has by then been
iables – specifically those failing very infrequently, drafted, but also any missing, technically addressable
trials may be insufficient as the amount of data required elements that are not managed in any other existing
to validate them would be large and costly. Thus, some standard or draft standard. Hence, the outline described
trials may have to be complemented with other valida- here may not be complete.
tion means that could include a design analysis. In this With this second draft, we will open membership in
way, validation could involve the combination of trials, GMAR to any entities with an interest in GNSS-based
analysis, and other testing means simultaneously. road-use metering by the end of the first quarter of 2009.
Other critical components, to be defined and testable, We expect that the second draft will be further critiqued
for such systems to be acceptable to most governments and modified by this membership. This will help guide
and motorists include: our industry to greater maturity. E
• Fraud Resistance which ensures that physical or
electronic tampering with on-board equipment is either Bern Grush is Chief Scientist at Skymeter
not possible or is remotely detectable. This covers: jam- (bgrush@skymetercorp.com).
ming, shielding, removal, spoofing, data alteration, and Joaquín Cosmen Schortmann is CEO Advisor at GMV
other potential measures and countermeasures. (jcosmen@gmv.com)

Security miles ahead

Tollway Solutions
by Magnetic Autocontrol
Security with Technology: In the field of barrier systems for motorway and • Maximum reliability and constant performance
city tollgates Magnetic Autocontrol has set milestones for over 40 years. Our • High security with low closing forces
durable high-quality barriers were designed for high frequency in application • Maintenance-free and compact solutions
and offer highest security both on planning and in operation. • Permanent adjustment of drive unit
• Automatic opening in case of power failure
• Swing-away with automatic feedback

Magnetic Autocontrol GmbH

D-79650 Schopfheim / Germany

Phone: +49 76 22 / 6 95-5
E-mail: info@ac-magnetic.com
www.ac-magnetic.com

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 No 4 09

Cashless Transactions

Money is
expensive
Who needs cash? KEN PHILMUS on cashless transactions
versus the ever-rising cost of money

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Money often costs too congestion often ensues. As electronic tolling was intro-
much.” Though I’m reasonably certain he was not duced into toll plazas this became even more compli-
referring to the cost of hiring someone to block a cated.While congestion was generally reduced because
roadway with a pike in order to collect a toll, he was some vehicles could now flow through toll plazas at
spot-on in describing why cashless tolling should higher speeds, this exacerbated the safety issue of
eventually be the norm on virtually every tolled, mixed-speed vehicles needing to find their way with
highway, bridge, tunnel, and managed lane. each other.
The unnecessary cost of using hard currency in toll Barrier-free, cashless electronic tolling virtually elim-
plazas is only one reason cash-based systems should be inates both of these issues. And with traffic no longer
abandoned in favor of cashless, barrier-free toll- required to stop and then go at toll plazas (after either
revenue collection. cash or electronic toll collection), barrier-free tolling
Money is good. I am rather fond of it, an affection I will also improve local air quality in the immediate vicin-
share with every transportation agency in the world that ity of the former toll plaza - and perhaps even regionally.
is charged with the expensive responsibility to build, But there’s more.Toll plazas cost money.They cost money
rehabilitate, or maintain transportation infrastructure. to build. They cost money to operate. And they cost
When it comes to collecting money on a mass scale in money to maintain and renovate. These are not insignifi-
the form of tolls, though, there have been some recent cant costs. Look at the costs from an operational stand-
advances that should be and are being given their due. point alone.
Since its inception not much more than a decade ago,
electronic tolling has come a long way, benefiting agen- Capital gains
cies and their customers alike. And now barrier-free, In addition to the up-front capital costs of plaza design
cashless tolling is rapidly attaining viability; it is provid- and construction, tollbooths and plazas must be staffed
ing transportation agencies with tremendous advan- and maintained. And those plazas do not operate with
tages,including greater net revenue potential,enhanced toll collectors alone. Toll plazas also require personnel
safety, improved congestion management, and future to handle security, maintenance, and currency removal.
flexibility. While there are some legitimate concerns There are also significant operational costs that extend
about the effectiveness, efficiency, and revenue impacts well beyond the life of the toll plaza itself (particularly
of cashless tolling, those concerns really should be put when pensions and health care costs of toll collection
to rest. staff are factored into the equation). But please don’t
misunderstand me. Barrier-free tolling is no panacea
Plazas take their toll either, and it does not happen for free.
For many years cash collecting toll plazas were a given, Barrier-free tolling does entail its own capital
an essential design element for every toll facility. But toll expenses. From the installation of considerable elec-
plazas create issues and problems that are inherent tronic equipment and communications networks to the
whenever you place an impediment in a roadway that demolition of the old toll plaza, barrier-free tolling is not
has vehicles traveling at high speeds. First, there are free or even necessarily cheap, at least not initially.
safety and congestion concerns. However, given the greatly reduced operating costs it
Designed to be as safe as humanly possible, toll pla- affords, the flexibility it engenders, and the funds it
zas must still handle fast-moving cars as they slow and saves on cash-based plaza rehabilitations or replace-
switch lanes. This process is neither simple nor safe. In ments, barrier-free tolling can more than pay for itself in
addition, because all traffic must stop at the toll plaza, a very short time.

10 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Cashless Transactions

“Toll plazas cost

far from
insignificant sums
to build, maintain,
renovate and
operate”

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 11

Cashless Transactions

The toll of a new machine

Barrier-free tolling is not a good idea; it’s a great one. But
every technology implementation has its complications.
However, the issues posed by cashless tolling should
not negate its implementation; they can usually be over-
come. Here’s how.
Traffic engineering geometry has generally treated
toll plazas as sacrosanct. In the design of many roads
and facilities, traffic has been made to stop before enter-
ing a bridge, tunnel, or road segment, limiting the flow
of traffic to and through that asset. With the toll plaza
removed, a particular asset’s geometry
may not be able to handle traffic flow- “Traffic design, and improved operational
ing at higher speeds. But toll plazas are methods, even more effective, cost-
also not the only way to decelerate traf- engineering efficient strategic security solutions
fic; there are other, safer ways. geometry has can and should be developed and
Obviously, each facility needs to be implemented.
carefully reviewed to ensure that unsafe generally treated Converting to a cashless system can
conditions will not be created by remov- toll plazas as certainly raise human resource con-
ing the toll plazas. Geometry will not cerns. Cashless systems do not need
even be an issue for many roadways. sacrosanct” the same staffing levels as cash-based
Security, however, might be. toll collection requires. But for existing
It is whispered that mechanical engineers make weap- facilities there are equitable ways to implement cash-
ons and civil engineers make targets. Unfortunately, in less systems without unduly affecting staff. First, a sig-
this post–September 11 world, that old joke could prove nificant number of staff can be reduced through attrition.
to be all too true. Bridges, tunnels, and other infrastruc- Next, through retraining and reassignment, a significant
ture are primary terrorist targets. And toll plazas have number of staff can be used in “back of the house” oper-
served as de facto security checkpoints since the attacks ations for enhanced toll evasion control, security, or cus-
of September 11, 2001. Though we must maintain effec- tomer service.
tive security at all times, keeping toll plazas solely for Labor union contracts, where they exist, can make this
security reasons is shortsighted. Through analysis, difficult - but they can be negotiated. Of course, each

12 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Cashless Transactions

agency must fully address union concerns and adhere The reality in our world today is this: unless you are com-
to whatever collective bargaining agreements are pletely “off the grid,” you’re completely on the grid. So
extant. However, implementing a cashless system the issue is not whether technology can track a person,
should be used as an opportunity to work with unions but who can access that information.
and employees to improve the system for everyone. When I was in charge of the E-ZPass cashless tag sys-
Treating staff as stakeholders and helping them invest tem at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,
themselves in the new technology can provide untold information about who used that infrastructure facility
dividends for all parties, including greater job security (and when) was automatically tracked. But the only time
for the staff. we ever released any information about how a tag was
Of course, such labor issues would not encumber new used was through a court subpoena. The privacy issue is
toll roadways that are starting from scratch, since they all about legislation. It is not about technology. And
don’t initially have any cash collection employees on transportation agencies looking to implement these
staff to contend with. systems should go to great lengths to partner with local
legislatures to ensure privacy protections are in place
The best til last and in practice.
I have saved what are perhaps the two most significant
issues for last: the increased potential for losing toll rev- Why less cash is more money
enue, and the potential threat to privacy. In addition to the key advantages mentioned previously,
In the traditional cash-collection/barrier system,“rev- there are a few additional benefits provided by cash-
enue leakage,” as toll evasion is called, was virtually less, barrier-free tolling. Things change. And when a
nonexistent. Unless a driver was willing to crash through transportation agency wants to change its tolling rates,
a barrier, avoiding a toll was virtually impossible. doing it in a cashless, barrier-free system is an order of
Today things are different; many barriers have been magnitude easier than with a cash-based system.With a
removed. So the implementation of either a hybrid cash cashless system, it is simply a matter of adjusting soft-
and electronic system or the ultimate fully cashless, bar- ware that is already designed to accommodate that pur-
rier-free system gives many jurisdictions great concern pose. Also, cashless systems provide great flexibility if
about the potential for losing revenue through toll avoid- an agency wishes to implement variable pricing, con-
ance. Those fears are maximized when there is no cash gestion pricing, or any other present or future strategy
option at all for the customer to utilize. Fortunately, tech- involving price-sensitive changes.
nology that can belay those fears is advancing rapidly. Finally, cashless systems also provide what may be
Through developments in optical reading technology, the best marketing information a transportation agency
smart license plates, cashless tag systems, and GPS and could obtain. In a cashless system, the agency would
vehicle infrastructure integration, toll avoidance will have the means to identify, and be in direct contact with,
largely become a thing of the past - especially when all of its customers and through data generated by its
combined with effective legislation that is designed to electronic toll collection systems, an agency can better
discourage toll avoidance. Being able to read license understand and meet the overall needs of its
plates and track users directly to their bank accounts or customers.
credit cards can ensure that users pay all tolls and
congestion-pricing charges instantly. In some jurisdic- The road less hassled
tions where these technologies are used today, car own- Money is good. And tolls are just monies properly col-
ers cannot even register a vehicle if they have a lected for a given service. But tolls mean more than that.
significant outstanding toll debt. These systems work, For centuries, they have helped build massive infra-
and they are improving every day. Although no system structure projects around the world. Travelers paid a toll
is foolproof, revenue leakage will become less of an to use the Susa-Babylonian Highway more than 2,700
issue as more and more systems convert to a cashless, years ago, and the one constant behind tolling has not
barrier-free collection approach, supported by concur- changed - the ever-present desire to improve the proc-
rent improved technology and legislation. ess, to make roads and bridges flow better (while still
collecting user fees for that service). Cashless, barrier-
Private thoughts free tolling is another important step in that continuum.
Then there is the issue of privacy. I like my privacy. And While by no means a panacea, it is a better way to con-
I believe that everyone has a right to her or his privacy. duct the business of tolling. It is a great idea whose time
But when it comes to tolling, congestion pricing, and rev- has come. Though much has changed since a guard with
enue collection via a license plate, RFID tag, or GPS sys- a pike blocked the road until a toll was paid, the desire
tem, privacy should be viewed as a legislative issue, not to improve the process is stronger than ever. And cash-
an infrastructure, technology, or transportation agency less, barrier-free tolling is the latest method for carry-
issue. Yes, with these technologies there is a greater ing out that desire. E
ability to track vehicle movements. And yes, that is Ken Philmus was National Director of Toll Services
something that potentially could be used against some- at AECOM and has recently joined ACS
one in a court of law; however, the same could be said where he will be Managing Director of
about the transaction records for a credit card purchase Transportation Services and Systems.
or a cell phone call or a swiped identification badge. ken.philmus@acs-inc.com

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 No 4 13

Congestion Charging

Against
demons
Autostrade’s LEONARDO ANCESCHI on how to sell
the idea of congestion charging to the public... the
Italian public in particular

It’s 6:00am and I’m in a cab heading towards Bir- Why congestion charging?
mingham Airport. No traffic jam, no tailbacks, no- Congestion charging is a concept derived from market
one angrily sounding their horn. The cab is running economics, regarding the use of pricing mechanisms to
fast and I’ll probably be early. Of course I will, it’s charge the users of public assets (in this case the use of
6.00am - but why isn’t it always easy as that? the streets) in exchange of the negative externalities
Recently I attended Thinking Highways’ European generated by the demand in excess of available supply
Congestion Management Think Tank in Birmingham, (traffic congestion). The main issue is, that throughout
UK, where one of the speakers talked about Traffic the world, countries are fighting a losing battle in build-
Demand Management (TDM), presenting it as “the solu- ing enough roads to meet the growing demand of cars
tion”, providing the ability to handle a congestion prob- (from 20 per cent of developed countries up to 35 per
lem before it arises and to influence the drivers’ cent for emerging countries in 10 years).
behavior. In theory it looks perfect and easy to intro- When demand exceeds supply, that shortage should
duce, but it is not always like that. The problem is that be corrected by charging the equilibrium price rather
many municipalities haven’t the strength (both from an than shifting it down by increasing the supply. Usually
economical and a political point of view) to introduce all this means increasing prices during certain periods of
the necessary measures foreseen by TDM. In contrast time or at the places where congestion occurs.
there are transport ‘paradises’ in Europe, thanks to the According to the economic theory behind congestion
introduction of real policies for sustainable mobility. pricing, the objective of this policy is that road users
All these paradises have adopted a scheme to control should pay for the additional congestion they create,
and manage vehicular access to city centres by identify- thus encouraging the redistribution of the demand in
ing vehicles accessing the area and fining those which space or in time, or shifting it to the consumption of
attempt at entering without being in possession of a alternative transport means, for example transferring
valid permit. They are generally referred to as conges- capacity from private to public transport.
tion charging and management schemes.
Some of them involve a pricing mechanism, i.e. pro- The Autostrade experience
viding drivers with the possibility to purchase the right Autostrade per l’Italia is known as a toll road conces-
of access, others simply the verification of the access sionaire and operator, with a long tradition of system
rights (e.g. for residents or special categories). That’s integrator and technology supplier, at both national and
where the name ‘congestion charging’ comes from after international level. During the last 20 years, it has con-
all... tributed to the development of the ITS market by imple-

14 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Congestion Charging

menting successful projects which are referred to as

benchmarks by the entire market.
It was the first concessionaire in Europe to introduce
5.8GHz electronic tolling, when launching the TELEPASS
system in 1989, still the largest electronic toll system in
Europe with the more than 6m users which, equipped
with a small on-board unit, perform each day over 4m
toll transactions along the near-6,000 km of the Italian
motorway network. By means of the subsidiary Europ-
pass LKW-Mautsystem, it also introduced in Austria the
first nationwide free-flow electronic tolling system in
2004, a benchmark for the entire market, by setting up in
time and budget a very complex system and operating
it smoothly since operation start.
The word “interoperability”, at a national level and schemes were introduced by several cities in Italy, such
between urban and interurban schemes, is well known as Florence, Siena, Pisa, all historical cities character-
to Autostrade per l’Italia since the mid-1990s, when the ized by aesthetic constraints. All these schemes make
national interoperable toll motorway scheme (among use of TELEPASS ETC and ANPR technologies to man-
23 concessionaires) was established and when several age access control to a limited zone, handling a list of
projects were launched in order to increase the diffu- authorized users (residents, disabled people, hotels cli-
sion of the ETC technology and a service integration ents and so on) and enforcing vehicles which enter with-
between urban and interurban schemes. out valid access rights.
Besides the national interoperable tolling scheme Taking Florence as an example, over 60,000 vehicles
based upon TELEPASS, a pilot project for an integrated access daily the congestion zone; the evidences col-
payment service was launched in Florence in 1995, lected upon violating vehicles result in the generation
under the name VIAPASS, with the objective of promot- of 3,800 enforcement notices issued per day. From the
ing the integration among different transport services analysis of the traffic volumes after the introduction of
(motorway, buses and parking) in the metropolitan area, the scheme, there has been a reduction of the traffic of
based upon a pre-pay Smart Card. about 12 per cent, an increased number of available
In the following years, congestion management parking spaces, and greater efficiency of public trans-

real vision
Inspiring reality Can you see it ?
ÒSmartÓ highways steering drivers to better,
safer routes ... tolls adjusting to trafÞc
demand ... transit systems integrating
seamlessly into the community ...
innovations that push the industry forward?

By applying our experience and creativity

to todayÕs difÞcult mobility problems,
and by building partnerships based on
respect and trust, PBS&J is helping
transportation agencies bring visions
like these to reality every day.

Visualize the future. Then call PBS&J.

OfÞces throughout the US

pbsj.com ¥ 800.477.7275

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 15

Congestion Charging

port, providing commuters with better transport alter- freedom and their “perceived” acquired rights. Users
natives and in general satisfaction by residents. tend to emphasize bad effects (charging) before under-
The above-mentioned schemes included only limited standing the good effects (congestion reduction), which
charging mechanisms, as they are based upon the veri- in any case only manifest themselves in the mid- to long-
fication of the access rights which certain vehicles – by term.
their own nature – have to enter the city centre; only in Public acceptance, together with appropriate legisla-
some cases users are offered the possibility to purchase tive tools, need to be achieved before developing these
such access rights. Full charging mechanisms were not schemes into full congestion pricing schemes. The way
implemented at that stage: the introduction of such auto- is long and it’s mainly based on consultation/communi-
matic congestion schemes is considered as the first step, cation among all stakeholders, to explain the full picture
with congestion pricing being considered as a second and to reach public acceptance.
step option, to be confronted with the user acceptance. Case studies concerning other successful congestion
charging schemes, with actual benefits in terms of
Technology is not the problem reduced traffic volumes and a reduction in the environ-
The technology is not an issue; there are several proven mental impact of those vehicles, including emissions,
technologies which can support the introduction of such noise, parking, and public transport benefits, may sup-
schemes. On the other hand it is of utmost importance to port the process.
design the best technical and operational solution which
fits with the local context, in order to avoid that such Referendum? Survey?
solution becomes an issue for the acceptance and sus- A referendum is a huge risk, but also a strong way of
tainability of the scheme. In the selection of the techni- legitimising the scheme. First of all Municipalities must
cal solution we should learn from the urban myth in explain to citizens why “doing nothing is not an
which NASA spent millions of dollars developing an option”.
“astronaut pen” which would work in outer space while It is a matter of marketing a product, where the prod-
the Soviets solved the same problem by using pencils. uct is sustainable transport, an improvement in public
Although the story is false, the moral is to keep it simple transport efficiency and finally the congestion charging
and use previously proven technology. scheme as a means to handle and re-distribute (where
A congestion charge scheme is a complex system and possible) congestion. The objective is not to demonize
according to my experience the biggest criticality cars, but to prefer more sustainable forms of mobility.
(beyond politic and communication) is the enforcement If you ask citizens whether they are in favor of Conges-
system. During the last few years we have concentrated tion Charging or not, the answer will be (obviously)
our efforts in developing a system with the objective of negative, as indicated by the negative result of the Edin-
minimizing the lost transactions and we finally reached burgh road tolls referendum using a very confusing
the outstanding result of only 0.0010 per cent lost trans- question: “The leaflet enclosed with this ballot paper
actions for automated transits. Is it really necessary? In gives information on the Council’s transport proposals
this case, probably not. for Edinburgh. The Council’s ‘preferred’ strategy
The best solution is a mixture of proven technologies, includes congestion charging and increased transport
because in most situations you cannot force citizens to investment funded by it. Do you support the Council’s
adopt an OBU, so you can track the frequent users with ‘preferred’ strategy?”.
an OBU (for which transactions are safer and cheaper) I also found a very interesting telephone survey con-
and an Automatic Number Plate Recognition for occa- ducted by The Manchester Evening News to gauge pub-
sional users and for enforcement purposes. lic support for a congestion charging scheme. The
In Italy we have mostly adopted a pragmatic solution, results were mixed and strongly depend on the survey
taking into account the topology of Italian streets, with question, so with the more articulated one (“Is conges-
the access/charging points being arranged into a sin- tion charging a price worth paying to get £3bn of Gov-
gle lane configuration. It is obvious that a multilane con- ernment cash to improve public transport in the region
figuration is required (and feasible) where the carriage – including the expansion of the Metrolink to Ashton
-way is larger. In most cases we have introduced the use under Lyne, Oldham and Rochdale, as well as South
of on-board units for frequent users, providing efficient Manchester and Manchester Airport?”) the result was
management and potentials for interoperability with positive. I concluded that the way attempted by Man-
the toll motorway schemes; users equipped with an on- chester seems good; a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’ ques-
board unit valid for city access may use it also along the tion was the easiest to understand, accompanied by
motorway, by registering for this other scheme. In some accurate neutral information explaining the proposal.
cases, especially with small size and low traffic schemes, Tomorrow a long peak-time queue is waiting outside
we have also adopted ANPR only schemes, which have for me… e
shown adequate results as well.
Leonardo Anceschi is Urban Traffic
So why is it so difficult? Solutions International Account at Autostrade
It’s difficult from a political point of view to introduce a per l’Italia S.p.A. in Italy.
congestion pricing scheme, as it is perceived by the leonardo.anceschi@autostrade.it
road users as an additional constraint, limiting their

16 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 ',/"!,4/,,).'35--)4›-!2#(
TUCM1478

Transurban is proud to host the IBTTA’s tolling technology and community relations For more information visit www.ibtta.org
first ever Toll Road Summit of Australia, from this region and around the world.
New Zealand and Asia. IBTTA Toll Road Summit
The Summit will feature international
Sydney Hilton Hotel
There has been a huge growth in tolling in industry leaders and provide an
March 15-18 2009
the Asia Pacific region. Hear about some of opportunity to visit Australia’s leading toll
the most innovative approaches to public roads, including Melbourne’s CityLink.
private partnerships, customer service,

Presented in partnership with

Interoperability

Transaction
Man
Interoperability is a great idea that has had a troubled life
so far. It may be a difficult word to type but is it really such
a difficult thing to put into practice, asks STEINAR FURAN

Interoperability has become a kind of a buzz-word another. Eventually a smart person figured out that the
in the ITS industry. Several actors appear on the concept of money would solve this problem. Suddenly,
scene promoting interoperability as a kind of a new one had achieved an interoperable concept where
invention and a brilliant idea that probably should oxcarts could be traded for pottery, wood for fish and so
qualify for a Nobel prize. It is a pity that there is no on through a simple interoperable payment scheme
Nobel prize for interoperability though. known as money.
Now, how unique is the concept of interoperability in For a few moments, the world was again in balance,
reality? What does interoperability until another smart guy invented the
really mean? How difficult is it to even- “With the concept ship and another one worked out what
tually reach this dream, this vision of a
world where everything is interopera-
of international it could be used for. With the concept
of international trade, suddenly a new
ble? Let’s spend a few minutes trying to trade a new challenge appeared as one would try
figure out what we are really up
against.
challenge to sell, for instance, Norwegian wood
for payment in pounds Sterling.
appeared” Now, the challenge wasn’t related to
To begin at the beginning the physical size of the wallet, as Brit-
Ever since human beings figured out that trade was a ish currency is considerably more compact than a cow,
good idea, interoperability has been an issue. The first but the guy from Norway would face a challenge when
ones starting to exchange cows, found out that it was he tried to make the British currency work at home, as
indeed possible to exchange for instance six sheep for nobody really knew the value of British currency.
one cow. More obvious challenges occurred when (The intelligent reader will now see that some oppor-
oxcarts had to be traded for one cow, two sheep and half tunists went to the trouble of inventing the banks, that
a dozen chickens. Not that it is very difficult to maintain would effectively rip off a piece of the value of every
a system classifying the value of objects into cows, currency exchange transaction).
sheep, chicken and so on, but it is utterly impractical to So the concept of exchange was invented and the
carry the valuables from one part of the country to world was again an orderly place.

18 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Interoperability

banknote is indeed genuine and the identification

number allows the issuing bank to uniquely identify
each individual note.This is done to secure that the mean
of payment can be trusted. The purpose of having a
trusted mean of payment means that one does not need
trust between the market actors to interact. I don’t need
to trust the gas station owner to buy gasoline from him
and he does not need to trust me in order to sell me
gasoline. As long as I receive my gasoline and he
receives his payment, both parties are comfortable and
happy.
This means, that from these examples, we can charac-
terize an interoperable payment system with the follow-
ing properties:

1: THE MEAN OF PAYMENT MUST BE TRUSTED.

This is a legal issue, as it sets requirements for how to
protect the mean of payment against fraud and to define
what would be found to be sufficient protection against
fraud. Having defined that, this also sets the rules for
determining when a proof of usage exists, thereby pre-
venting repudiation.

2: THE COMMERCIAL TERMS FOR USE MUST BE

AGREED. All issuers of means of payment must agree
on the terms of use of their mean of payment in other
issuers’ systems. In line with the bank fees for handling
exchange of currency, there must be rules for accepting
claims and rewarding the original issuer for the use of
the service in “foreign” systems.

3: THE MEAN OF PAYMENT MUST BE “READA-

BLE” TO THE FOREIGN SYSTEM. This is a technical
question and the answer to that question is simple: As
long as the technology is specified, it can be used. Simi-
Cattle-ready lar to a banknote: As long as I can see it and touch it, I can
Sadly, peace doesn’t last for a great deal of time as along use it.
comes the electronic means of payment. Besides offer-
ing payment services through the use of accounts con- And now for the good news...
taining GBP, €, NOK or another of the world’s hundreds Sometimes companies announce that they are bringing
of currencies, these devices suddenly also offered “cow new, fantastic interoperable products to the market. It
and oxcart-style” payments as one of their services. Not would be unfair to say that these statements are false,
literally, as you’d either need a tiny cow or an enormous but they are at best only telling one third of the story,
electronic transponder, but still in the same fashion as namely the fact that it is indeed possible to use the
the electronic services offered period subscriptions, device (which shouldn’t be amazing in itself, really). The
specific discount arrangements, loyalty schemes and so rest of the story, the two-thirds that define the legal
on. Most people would probably say that a period sub- framework for the usage and the commercial terms for
scription is still money as you will have to pay a mone- the use of the service, still isn’t mentioned. Although one
tary amount to receive the benefit. out of three sometimes is considered fairly good, this is
This is correct, the challenge is not related to the fact not so for interoperability.
that the money pays for the cow. The challenge arises Interoperability starts with a legal basis, continues
when you try to retrieve a part of the cow to pay for with agreements on commercial terms and settles with
another service. technical details. So this is bad news for anyone trying to
tell the world that new technical inventions will cater for
Central issue interoperability, but it is good news for anyone that
So now we have reached the core of the interoperability really wants to achieve interoperability.
issue. Looking at a banknote, one will find that it carries After all, the technology is there the moment the other
some distinctive features, such as intricate drawings, two are in place. As Meatloaf so succinctly put it, two out
UV-coloured imprints, watermarks, security films and of three ain’t bad. e
an identification number.
These serve the purposes of creating trust that the steinar.furan@q-free.com

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 19

South Africa

A glimpse of
the future
Electronic fare collection in South Africa is moving
to the regulation phase, says DR PAUL VORSTER

20 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 South Africa

Clockwise from top page xx: Centurion, Pretoria, Rosebank,

Rhodesfield, ORTIA and Marlboro

Public transport infrastructure and supporting sys-

tems have moved to the top of the transport agenda
in South Africa. Hosting the FIFA Soccer World Cup
in South Africa in 2010 has given this a further boost
with several mega-projects in progress.
The Department of Transport has published draft
electronic fare collection (EFC) regulations. The set of
regulations is the result of work by the Department’s
technical team who consulted widely with interested
parties in South Africa and abroad to obtain input into
the EFC policy and draft regulations. A specialist trans- Fare and square
port consultancy, Techso (Pty) Ltd was contracted to The South African Minister of Transport, Mr Jeff Radebe,
manage the project, lead by Dr Johann Andersen and issued Notice 1241 in Government Gazette 31491 dated
ably assisted by Keith Smith (payments specialist, Keith 7 October 2008 in terms of section 5(6) (c) of the National
Smith Consulting) and Neil Frost (SAHA). Land Transport Transition Act, 2000 (ACT NO. 22 of
Says Ibrahim Seedat, Director Public Transport Policy 2000). In this he gave notice of his intention to issue the
in the Department of Transport: “Developing public Regulations for the Requirements of the Electronic Fare
transport to a level where it provides a real and practical Collection in the schedule.
option for commuters is a national imperative. Elec- The deadline for written comments on these Require-
tronic fare collection (EFC) will play a critical role to ments expired on 7 November 2008. After considering
achieve this.” such comments as have been received, the final regula-
According to Seedat a key objective is to achieve an tions will be issued and form the basis of South Africa
integrated EFC system for public transport that is inter- EFC deployment.
operable nationally. To achieve this the South African The draft regulations say to achieve an integrated EFC
Department of Transport is developing a policy frame- system for public transport that is interoperable nation-
work to guide EFC implementation countrywide and to ally, the following principles apply as a minimum:
assist provincial and metropolitan governments and • EFC must be made through any bank issued
their service providers towards interoperability. fare media where “fare media” is defined as payment
To facilitate the widest possible comment as input, ITS instrument issued by a participating bank based on
South Africa hosted two workshops on the topic at the EMV specifications and conforming to the requirements
request of the Department of Transport. The workshops of the EFC data structure. Bank issued fare media also
were attended by a record number of delegates from means a fare collection system which comprises:
local and international parties representing consult- o A payment instrument distribution network and
ants, equipment suppliers, systems integrators and so value loading infrastructure;
on. o An electronic payment transaction clearing and

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 21

South Africa

settlement function; User pays

o A payment transaction initiation and accept- Another guiding principle is that occasional or infre-
ance infrastructure and acquiring function; and quent passengers of public transport services, which
o Associated information systems utilized for the have implemented EFC may be able to obtain a prepaid
management and analysis of fare schedules and data so single trip ticket from the public transport operator who
collected and their conversion into information. is providing the service or any third party operating in
• EFC must be interoperable through all partici- conjunction with that operator. Provided that the pre-
pating banks; paid single trip ticket is issued exclu-
• Clearing and settlement of “Public transport sively for the redemption of the single
payment transactions must take place data must be trip public transport service by that
through the National Payment System operator, this prepaid single trip ticket
in accordance with the National Pay- collected may consist of any appropriate fare
ment System Act (act 78 of 1998). electronically media and does not necessarily have
• Banked passengers must be to be a bank issued fare media.
able to use bank issued fare media concurrently with In the transportation data system for
obtained as a result of their relation- the payment or those public transport services that
ship with any participating bank; have implemented EFC, public trans-
• Unbanked passengers must redemption port data must be collected electroni-
be able to obtain prepaid stored value transaction” cally through the EFC system
bank issued fare media from a partici- concurrently with the payment or
pating bank or a third party card issuer operating in redemption transaction.
conjunction with the participating bank; The relevant sphere of Government takes ownership
• The payment system must adhere to the bank- of the data collected through the EFC system. Data must
ing and payment regulatory framework; and be collected for planning and operational purposes and
• The EFC data structure must be loaded onto all must include data per transaction on location, fare and
bank issued fare media.“EFC data structure” means the passenger.
EFC Data Structure, which utilises specific tags on the The database must enable the extraction of suitable
EMV chip of the bank issued fare media for electroni- data by the local, provincial and national spheres of gov-
cally recording and retrieving public transport-related ernment for planning, monitoring, subsidy management
data. and related purposes.
The data must comply with the MOIS for information
South Africa is keen to move on from its primitve fare collection systems in government, where “MOIS” means Minimum
systems Interoperability Standards for information systems in
the public service, which are issued in terms of Regula-
tion B.1 of Part III of Chapter 5 of the Public Service Reg-
ulations, as published in Government Notice No. 1346 of
1 November 2002.
The EFC system must be flexible to accommodate
fare structures based on local needs, but must be aligned
with any national fare policy, which may be adopted
form time to time.
The EFC system must comply with the relevant stand-
ards endorsed by the STANSA SC71H Committee or,
if there are no such standards, international non-
proprietary open-standards to ensure interoperability
and compatibility as contemplated in section 5(6)(c) of
the Act.
Legacy electronic fare collections, which do comply
with these requirement, must be either upgraded or
phased out. “Legacy EFC system” means any existing,
fully operational electronic fare collection system of
which the banking industry does not form part of through
any bank issued fare media. After date of publication, all
new EFC systems in public transport services must
comply with these requirements. Any legacy electronic
fare collection system must be upgraded to comply with
these requirements, or be phased out within five years
from the date of publication of these requirements. e
Dr Paul J Vorster is CEO of ITS South Africa. He can be
contacted via email at paul@itssa.org or visit the
website at www.itssa.org

22 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Comment

All to
play for
MIKE HAYWARD reports from the Travel Demand
Management Cup Final where Pricing are taking
on Charging...

The debate around road pricing and congestion investment in public transport, active traffic manage-
charging (or is it road charging and congestion pric- ment, additional road network capacity on key strategic
ing) in the UK grows ever more topical. routes and yes, road pricing. The first three have and are
In recent weeks we have seen the press cover stories being taken forward but the last one is more difficult and
about impending government announcements, each clearly less popular. The road pricing/congestion
with long lists of reasons why the imminent schemes are charging element of demand management has, apart
flawed and an equal number of organisations lining up from in central London at least, not been implemented.
to ensure these schemes never happen. However, the In marketing terms, we haven’t yet seen a proposition
basic problem still exists which is that road space - in the that customers will buy.
short term at least - is finite and demand continues to However, we know the benefits exist. They have been
grow especially in peak hours. proven by traffic modellers and transport planners.
Inter-urban journey times we are told are becoming There is some debate over what level of pricing would
more reliable through improved and
more active traffic management,
“The congestion reduce peak demand enough to make a
difference to journey time reliability,
although road users still experience charging element but the M6 toll road’s proposition is
significant delays and unreliability,
particularly in the crowded South East
of demand understood by most motorists intui-
tively and those that use it at least are
of England. management has prepared to pay for the privilege of a
Growing economies generally pro-
duce increased levels of mobility of
not been less congested alternative.

people and goods and resulting traffic implemented” A question of marketing

congestion, and the economic slow- I often hear colleagues and friends say:
down at the moment may be a useful temporary diver- “As a motorist I don’t agree with pricing or paying more
sion or blip on the graph of rising demand. The cost of tax for using the roads” and I have to say I have some
congestion to our economy we are told runs into bil- sympathy with this view. Road pricing, it would seem,
lions. isn’t a marketable proposition. Or is it ?
Let’s consider that other great ‘free’ resource, the air.
A USP, PDQ In general and by analogy, why is it as consumers we
So what’s the answer ? Well, a few years ago there was don’t expect not to pay for airtime for our mobile phones,
much talk of integrated demand management as the and in many cases we don’t even bother to check the
way forward. This was to be achieved by a mixture of cost of

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetcc Vol 3 No 4 23

Comment

a call? The debate at the recent Thinking Highways’ Euro- platinum are. After all the value is already calculated
pean Congestion Management Think Tank in Birming- indirectly by organisations and ‘priced-in’ as part of
ham, UK, got me thinking. Is there a truly market based transportation costs within the overall price of products
model that could sort this whole pricing versus free for or services.
all question. The problem with most road pricing propo- The ‘price’ for most other commodities is determined
sitions to date is that the pricing is determined by the by spot markets and not by individual organisations or
owner or operator of the road network and not truly by governments. Continuing the analogy for a moment, you
customer demand. If a road is tolled there is only one could see for example a coach company or a haulier
vendor of the road space and therefore generally no might want to ‘buy forward’ his road space for the next
choice. This immediately sets the user community year or so, whilst someone with less time critical require-
against the proposition as they equate the price to a tax ments may accept to travel in the cheapest time slots.
and all the issues that go with taxation. So we have road Roads where demand for access is highest would auto-
charging and not pricing. matically be traded at higher prices in the market than
say rural Motorways. Congestion pricing, but with the
A subtle proposition price determined by actual customer demand.
Broadly speaking there are two ways to Each type of road user might buy his
conceive of charging for road use. i.e. “So are we trying to road space through different vendors
there are two possible customer propo-
sitions, which are the charging proposi-
answer the wrong e.g. trade/wholesale versus retail. In
this model there would be more than
tion and the pricing proposition. In the question about one vendor for the same road space.
first, the charging proposition, the cus-
tomer pays a charge largely determined
road user charging Service providers would buy road
space in the market and sell it on their
by the policy of the government or road and should we customers. i.e. instead of paying a toll,
operator. There is no choice for the cus-
tomer either about which service pro-
simply let the the road user receives a mobility bill at
the end of the quarter from his chosen
vider to use or which price to pay and, market decide?” service provider. A bit like a mobile
consequently, there is a relatively high phone bill - although hopefully a bit
operating and enforcement cost to ensure customers more understandable. Another side effect would be to
pay. Most current schemes seen in Europe broadly fit make transportation costs more directly visible to cus-
this model. tomers and for example promote locally sourced
However, a second model can be conceived where goods.
demand for road space directly determines the price So the answer, in theory at least, could be to let market
paid by the user. The road operator or government pricing regulate demand. I am sure economists, taxa-
would not directly set the charge for road use, instead tion experts and the like can think of hundreds of rea-
the price for road use would be determined by a mar- sons why this wouldn’t work, or even how it could work,
ket. Road use becomes a tradable commodity, through but from the customers’ viewpoint it sounds a more
the selling of time slots, pricing is value driven rather acceptable proposition than a fixed per mile charge or
than policy driven although some policy objectives can - as many would call it - tax. It is even possible within a
equally be met through regulation of the market. The market driven model to conceive bulk buying of slots by
payment of charges is also decoupled from the road government e.g. for schemes to provide concessionary
operator reducing overheads and enforcement costs. rates for the over 60s, key workers, emergency vehicles
Demand for road space determines price. and so on. Result: Pricing 3, Charging 0. One problem
exists though, which is that a new excuse for being late
More questions than answers could emerge as follows:‘I was three hours late because
So are we trying to answer the wrong question about forward selling of M25 slots caused an accident...’ E
road user charging and should we simply let the market Mike Hayward is principal of Transport Logic Ltd.
decide? Perhaps, road space should be considered sim- He can be contacted via email at
ply as a commodity, in the same way that say copper or mike.hayward@transportlogic.co.uk

24 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

Public Private Partnerships

Public-private partnership contracting for ITS: it’s time to

heed the operations and maintenance omens, says
DR ROBERT EDELSTEIN

Benjamin Disraeli said: “The secret of success is FDOT and I-595: leading by example
consistency of purpose.” That sentiment ably cap- In my home state of Florida, the Florida Department of
tures the secret to handling public-private partner- Transportation (FDOT) is in the process of awarding a P3
ship projects involving intelligent transportation procurement for the I-595 corridor. A 10.5-mile roadway
systems (ITS) especially when focusing on the criti- project, the I-595 Corridor Improvements Project
cal operations and maintenance function. includes reconstruction of original lanes, the addition of
The question has changed from an ‘if’ to a ‘how’. Pub- auxiliary lanes, a new reversible express-lanes system
lic-private partnerships (P3s) are no longer just abstrac- in the I-595 median, and the resurfacing of the I-595
tions, nebulous arrangements that may “someday” mainline.
happen in the United States. They are happening now. The project was initially expected to cost approxi-
And their prevalence will only increase. From this point mately US$1.5billion but the state has roughly half that
forward, the mission is to determine how best to imple- amount available. Under traditional practices, it would
ment them; but implementations to date have produced take the state about 20 years to obtain the additional
mixed results. funding. However, through a P3 contract, the FDOT can
In a 2005 report, Deploying and Operating Integrated get the work done in five years. The P3 procurement is
Intelligent Transportation Systems, the Federal High- unusual, though, in that the private-sector entity will not
way Administration (FHWA) had this to say about P3s: control or collect tolls. FDOT will retain that authority
“While such partnerships may help to reduce the costs and function, providing the private-sector entity with an
and risks associated with ITS applications, they have not “availability payment” of approximately US$60-70m
met the high expectations many originally had for them. per year. The actual payment will be tied to the contrac-
In general, these partnerships fell well short of their tor’s ability to meet agreed-upon performance meas-
intended goal of enabling public agencies to provide ures. So, what is the FDOT asking the P3 contractor to
high-quality traveler information through partnering do?
with the private sector under a viable and profitable Specifically, the FDOT seeks to procure a public-
business model.” private partner to “design, build,
A key element of the shortfall has “It is essential that finance, operate, and maintain an urban
been operations and maintenance interstate highway, including frontage
(O&M). But why? According to the
P3 contractors be roads; to construct and resurface the
FHWA report, “O&M costs are a major on the same page as I-595 mainline, including the addition
and often overlooked challenge to of auxiliary lanes and Turnpike Inter-
realizing and optimizing ITS benefits.”
their public-sector changes (and all associated improve-
The FHWA is right. And when it counterparts” ments to adjacent cross-roads, frontage
comes to ITS, and more specifically roads and ramps); and to construct a
O&M for ITS projects delivered through the P3 model, new express lanes system in the I-595 median.”
the issue centers almost exclusively on consistency. This example perfectly illustrates the value of consist-
ency: FDOT is stipulating in the procurement specifica-
P3 ITS Esperanto tions that the P3 contractor must use FDOT’s SunGuide
Many hands can make for light work. But each of those software for its O&M. Developed by the state, SunGuide
hands must understand exactly what the other hands software is used for the state’s seven regions, as well as
are doing and how they’re doing it. And they must all for the Florida Turnpike. However, the state is imposing
function together seamlessly, presenting a coherent one additional restriction on use of the software. Should
face to the public at large. For that reason, it is essential any SunGuide upgrades be necessary, or any additional
that P3 contractors be on the same page as their public- modules need development, the P3 contractor must pay
sector counterparts. Let me explain. for that as well. Given that the project includes the estab-
With ITS projects, many roadways will become seg- lishment of reversible lanes, something that the state
mented. One section will be operated, controlled, and hasn’t developed for SunGuide yet,the P3 contractor
maintained by the public sector; the next segment might will most certainly have to bear that cost. But the state is
be handled by a private-sector contractor; and so on absolutely right in requiring SunGuide’s use, for two
down a given road, segment by segment. Without con- reasons.
sistency, that can lead to serious fragmentation, mis- First, the devices that control the road-based cameras,
communication, and uneven, mediocre service at a time signs, and detector systems must all use the same soft-
when customer expectations are rising, right in con- ware to efficiently monitor and operate the road. But it’s
junction with toll rates. To prevent that from happening, equally important that they use the same software so
states must plan P3 procurements with great care, and that when information is entered into the system there
with a discerning eye on consistency. But rather than are no lags, mistakes, or miscommunications. A great
continue in the abstract, here is a specific illustration. many subtleties and nuances are associated with soft-

26 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Public Private Partnerships

Perfect
partners
www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 27
Public Private Partnerships

ware that is this complex. Parallel qualifications, train- portation. Consider the price of gasoline five years ago
ing, and uniformity of use are essential to ensure that as compared to today’s price. A P3 contract must take
every user is on the same page.Without consistent train- into account the potential for change.
ing and qualification levels, disparities can surface. And Performance criteria for the private-sector partner
disparities in an ITS system can bring the integrity of the should be indexed to reflect the region being served. If
entire system into question. Ultimately, that can be dan- a DOT is meeting certain performance criteria and
gerous. those criteria change on a year-to-year basis because of
Another important reason for uniformity concerns external factors (cost of living increase, price of oil, etc.),
performance measures. P3 partners must meet or appropriate consideration must be extended to any pri-
exceed certain performance criteria in the execution of vate-sector partner. It should be written into the contract
any P3 contract. In this particular procurement, the that performance measures will be adjusted to address
yearly P3 payment hinges on the contractor meeting these anomalies on an annual basis. From the price of
established performance measures. Based on the level gas to insurance to inflation, these elements need to be
of quality established by the FDOT over many years, negotiated as part of any P3 deal and factored into the
these measures are neither capricious nor arbitrary. To agreement. Of course, the same heed should be paid to
apply them accurately, though, every stakeholder must consistency when establishing the parameters for
be on the same page, using the same software and hav- adjustable performance measures.
ing received the same training. To accurately gauge a P3
contractor’s performance, it is critically important (for Preventing a staff defection
both the public and private-sector partners) that apples Finally, there is a very serious issue concerning O&M
are being compared to apples. staffing. State DOTs spend years hiring and training staff
Dynamic message signs (DMSs) are another area that to operate and maintain their systems. P3 contractors
demands consistency. At present, most DMSs relay sim- should definitely not treat this state work force as a
ple information through straightforward lines of text. recruiting pool. From the state’s perspective, losing staff
That needs to change. As highways evolve, DMSs are can be devastating after such a great investment has
evolving as well. DMSs should soon be using graphics been made for recruitment and training. So poaching
and symbols to provide information about variable pric- that staff will not win the contractor any friends in the
ing, toll rates, lane status, alternate routes, and other DOT. The same is true for any private firms that have
information useful to the traveler. Motorists will be mak- contracted with a DOT over time. But there is another
ing lightning-quick decisions about routes and other way.
alternatives based on this next generation of dynamic Rather than pilfer staff, P3 contractors should consider
signage. The potential for motorist confusion could be finding a way to use the existing consultants and con-
great if there is a lack of consistency. That is not a small tractors already operating a given system. By finding a
issue. way to incorporate existing expertise, P3 contractors
Obviously there is a safety issue here. Any confusion can often achieve considerable savings by exploiting
on the road is potentially dangerous. So symbols and intellectual capital that is already extant. Of course, it
graphics must be straightforward, accurate, and easy to must fit into the P3’s cost structure, but there is great
understand. Next, if motorists are paying a premium to benefit in doing this. It is much easier to establish con-
use a stretch of road and that road is not clear for use, as sistency and trust if the P3 contractor brings to the table
a DMS may have indicated, those drivers will not be people with whom the DOT is already comfortable.
happy customers. Aside from the risk of not meeting
performance measures, faulty or misleading informa- P3 or not to P3? That’s not even a question
tion affects a DOT’s reputation as well as the functional It has changed from an if to a how. The bottom line, given
value that a HOT lane or tolled facility brings to a sys- the funding shortfalls we face, is that we need P3 projects
tem. The issue of consistency and conformity when cre- to help build and upgrade our infrastructure. But that
ating a DMS lexicon is serious, and must be addressed does not mean that we should rush blindly into P3 con-
in any P3 venture. tracting. Quite the contrary: this is a time for crafting
From interchanges to operational quality to incident smart, efficient agreements that benefit all parties. And
messaging to service patrols to open-road policies, when it comes to using P3 for ITS projects - and particu-
consistency throughout a P3 contract can determine larly their O&M components. Disraeli was right. E
whether a contractor meets performance measures and
ultimately receives the full payment available. It also Dr. Robert Edelstein, P.E., PTOE, is a vice president of
protects a DOT’s service quality and reputation. It can AECOM Transportation; he also directs the firm’s ITS
also save lives. Consistency issues permeate practically operations. He has accumulated 35 years’ experience in
every aspect of ITS O&M, and must be comprehensively ITS, traffic engineering, and transportation planning,
addressed in the procurement contract. Consistency is completing assignments in over a dozen states as well as
that important. abroad. A licensed professional engineer registered in
five states, he also holds a Ph.D. in transportation plan-
P3 contracting: a non-static thing ning and engineering, and is certified as a professional
In being consistent, one must also be realistic and flexi- traffic operations engineer.
ble. Things change, especially when dealing with trans- robert.edelstein@aecom.com

28 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

IT´S ALL ABOUT TRAFFIC SAFETY.
75 years ROBOT Visual Systems

Since 75 years Robot Visual Systems stands for develop- ROBOT Visual Systems GmbH
ment of modern camera technology. Today we are the Opladener Strasse 202
market leader in the area of transport surveillance and 40789 Monheim, Germany
transport safety technology. Our stationary and mobile Tel. +49 (0) 21 73 - 39 40 - 0
systems should contribute to measurably reducing traffic Fax +49 (0) 21 73 - 39 40 - 169
accidents. This is our vision; ROBOT is working on it each export@robot.de
day with its highly specialised team. www.traffipax.com
Opinion Piece

Challenging
conventional
wisdom
NORBERT SCHINDLER’s time in New York for the ITS
World Congress was far from wasted. Not only did
he get to revisit the town in which he grew up but a
number of discussions he had while at the Javits
Convention Center saw him head straight for his
laptop upon his return.This just in...

I attended this year’s ITS World Congress without proposed a curious thesis over a glass of beer on our
many expectations, concentrating mostly on repre- stand: in the telecommunications industry, everyone
senting Siemens Electronic Tolling, part of the new struggles to be the first to deploy the newest technolo-
Mobility Division. gies, while in the transportation sector, everyone wants
The attendance in the exhibition hall exceeded expec- to install only what has been done before.
tations, and I had some interesting discussions with In New York I encountered a number of common views
many familiar faces – as well as with a number of new on tolling technologies that I would like to challenge:
faces. On Thursday afternoon, once we had everything • Tag and beacon technology is the industry
packed up, I took the bus to Boonton, New Jersey, the standard and is here to stay. At best, at least in the United
town where I grew up. It’s always an States, there is a choice of whether to
“US tag and beacon
impressive sight, especially at night, to increase the functionality of such micro-
get out of the Lincoln Tunnel and look wave-based systems for more or less
out across the Hudson River at the Man- systems are the same price (5.9 GHz), or to maintain
hattan skyline. At that moment I began increasing in the same (or slightly reduced) function-
to reflect on the many discussions I had ality with significantly reduced costs
during the Congress. popularity as (i.e. by introducing sticker tags).
If you observe the market very gen- interstate • Automatic Number Plate Rec-
erally, you might get the impression ognition (ANPR) cameras don’t get the
that the electronic tolling industry standards make best results and are only really useful to
hasn’t made any major breakthroughs electronic payment enforce tag and beacon systems.
over the past few years. In contrast to • Satellite-based systems are far
the telecommunications industry, far more efficient” too complex and too costly to be imple-
where I originally came from, new tech- mented on a large scale and it will take
nological approaches in the area of tolling are rarely a long time until the technology matures enough for it to
embraced with any noticeable amount of enthusiasm. be deployed in nationwide tolling schemes.
It appears that many tolling industry leaders prefer to
maintain the status quo. Key decision makers (usually Tag and beacon
within state-owned organizations) also have the obvious In the United States, tag and beacon systems are enjoy-
tendency to avoid risks and go with proven solutions ing increasing popularity as interstate standards, such
rather than trying something new. A British consultant as E-Z Pass, make electronic payment far more efficient

30 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Opinion Piece

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 41 31

Opinion Piece

than manual payment at toll plazas. Yet toll plazas still to the existing 915 MHz tags, but there are a number of
exist (and continue to be built) and, typically, there are added features that could, for example, improve road
still physical barriers at the E-Z Pass lanes which open safety.
automatically when you slow down to 5 mph and get There have been significant investments made in the
your tag read successfully. There are a few cases of 5.9 GHz technology for the Vehicle Infrastructure Inte-
multi-lane free flow implementations in the US, but they gration (VII) program.Yet nobody can realistically fore-
are far and few between and not necessarily viewed as cast when, if ever, VII will become readily available.
being very successful projects. In Europe, a few micro- There is a great deal of roadside infrastructure neces-
wave-based systems supporting multi-lane free flow sary to get this kind of system to work effectively, and
tolling have appeared in the last few years. As effective this bears a huge price-tag. It’s not clear who should pay
as some of these systems may be, there is nothing really for all of this, and 5.9 GHz would also have to operate in
revolutionary about the use of microwave technology parallel to the existing 915 MHz technology for an
any more. It will also take many years before you can extended transition period.
drive throughout Europe with a single During the technical sessions in New
tag. “Existing toll plazas York, there was even some speculation
The technology is proven and is basi-
cally user-friendly and the tags are rel-
may eventually be that satellite-based solutions could be
deployed during a transition phase
atively cheap and easy to install. You torn down and until there was enough 5.9 GHz equip-
just have to make sure the tag is changed
after a few years when the battery
replaced with high- ment built up on the ground! Of course,
once satellite technology is used to
power runs out. For occasional users, quality cameras ” achieve VII functionality, it would be
the whole business of registration and hard to argue the need to further invest
purchasing a tag is often not worth the trouble. The over- in roadside equipment.
head involved in tag distribution, tag replacement, lost
tags, or the phenomenon of users leaving the tags in ANPR cameras
their glove compartment (which can lead to an occa- There is a significant revolution taking place at this very
sional read when passing a beacon) are issues which moment. ANPR cameras are being used to identify vehi-
are not often spoken about. In other words, “bad reads” cles and levy a tolling fee on all vehicles liable to pay.
are probably not as infrequent as many would like to This is typically set up in a multi-lane free flow environ-
believe. That’s why you have cameras placed next to ment. Existing toll plazas may eventually be torn down
many (or in some cases all) beacon installations at the and replaced by high-quality cameras which catch
roadside, for enforcement purposes. every passing vehicle, making traffic delays for tolling a
thing of the past.
Carrot and sticker The microwave advocates will claim that you will never
In the US, the industry struggles with the question about get as many positive reads on license plates as you can
whether sticker-tags will eventually take over. They are with a tag and beacon system. Although this could be
much cheaper to produce and distribute, very easy to true, it is easy to forget that the installation of tags and
stick on windshields, and there are no batteries to worry beacons is a significant overhead that may, in many
about. Existing roadside infrastructure can easily be cases, exceed the benefits of deploying all this extra
used for sticker tags. The other main alternative being microwave hardware. What’s more convenient than
discussed is the deployment of tags using the 5.9 GHz ordering a tag and installing it in your vehicle? The
bandwidth. For the end-user, there isn’t much difference answer is simple: no tag at all! And since most roadside
All photographs by Norbert Schindler

32 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Opinion Piece

equipment includes cameras anyway (to enforce In Baltimore, hundreds of volunteers have just been
correct tag usage), why not rely on them completely? recruited to participate in a federally funded study on
There are video-based tolling solutions being estab- the use of satellite technology, and other urban areas
lished in Texas, for example, and other states will prob- around the country will follow.
ably follow suit. Of course, you will never get 100 per Trials of satellite-based tolling systems are also very
cent “positive reads” on an ANPR camera, but you don’t popular in Europe. Extensive trials have been con-
get them with tags either. However, positive reads are ducted for several years in the United Kingdom (with no
typically well above 90 per cent by ANPR cameras being end in sight), and also the Netherlands started doing the
deployed for tolling and congestion charging schemes. same in mid-2007. Holland is preparing to build the
Furthermore, with a camera, you always get a picture of most extensive road user pricing system in the world,
potential violators that you can use for manual checking. involving over 8m vehicles on the entire Dutch road net-
With a bad tag read, there’s nothing you can do (unless work of more than 130,000 kilometers. Singapore also
you have a camera next to the beacon taking pictures, of completed a series of trials last year, a very challenging
course). environment considering the numerous skyscrapers
When the City of Stockholm decided to try out con- and the inevitable “urban canyons” which usually ham-
gestion charging for six months in 2006, it was decided per good GPS reception. In each of these trials, up to a
to use both microwave and camera equipment at the dozen technology suppliers were tested.
roadside. After the trial, it was shown that the camera The outcome of these various trials is always the same:
reads were so good that the microwave equipment, satellite-based technology works, it is suitable for auto-
which was already paid for, yielded only marginally mated electronic tolling, and the platform allows a level
better identification of vehicles than cameras alone. It of flexibility that cannot be matched by any other tech-
was decided to forego the use of tags altogether, since nology to date. Nevertheless, more trials are being pre-
the added operational costs did not warrant their use. pared at this very moment. In New York, I was asked
Once the system started permanent operation last year, whether Siemens would be interested in participating
tags have only been used to identify a limited number of in trials in the Czech Republic and in Sweden. The
vehicles which are exempt from the charge. Hundreds of Swedes sweetened their proposal with the prospect of
thousands of unused tags are probably gathering dust being able to present the test results at the next ITS
somewhere in a warehouse in Stockholm. World Congress in Stockholm next year.
Now, don’t get me wrong, trials can be a lot of fun, and
Satellite-based tolling solutions it’s nice to have an environment in which you can test
In the US, satellite-based solutions have been exten- your latest technological developments. Siemens has
sively tested in the states of Washington and Oregon. been working on satellite-based electronic tolling for

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetcc Vol 3 No 4 33

Opinion Piece

many years, and we don’t hesitate to point out the advan- first-class road network would hardly pay for itself, so
tages of this technology. We may be very partial on this the originally planned toll road network was cut in half.
subject, I will readily admit that. But by now it is abso- Slovenia, the smallest country in the European Union,
lutely undeniable that satellite-based tolling is more one with many years of tag and beacon experience on
than mature. its motorways, is about to issue a tender for a nationwide
For four years now, there has been a tolling system in truck tolling scheme. Rumour has it that they will join the
operation right in the middle of Europe, using satellite ranks of Germany and Slovakia in building a satellite-
technology. Over 700,000 vehicles have been equipped based solution. In a month or two, France will announce
with GPS-based “On Board Units”, the tolled motorway a tender to introduce tolling on all trucks over 3.5 tons
network exceeds 12,000 kilometers, and a very nice on its entire first-class road network. Even though France
sum of money is generated by this scheme, year after has Europe’s most extensive tag and beacon system
year. In fact, I would say that €3billion of annually gener- established on its motorways, there is no doubt that this
ated revenue is a very handsome amount of cash. new tolling scheme will be based on satellite technol-
Has the German truck tolling scheme ever failed in its ogy. The Dutch are pressing forward with their ambi-
four years of operation? No, it actually hasn’t.Were there tious nationwide scheme and their neighbors in Belgium
any problems getting the system up and running? Yes, are currently moving towards a very similar tolling
there were. But considering the sheer magnitude and scheme.You can guess which tolling technology is being
complexity of the system, and the fact that nothing like considered in the home of the European Capital...
this was ever done before, I would think that the German In the next few years, we will witness the complemen-
and French companies involved (as well as many who tary effect of a large installation of satellite-based OBUs
were closely watching on the sidelines) being produced for much less money
learned some valuable lessons in proc- “The electronic than now. Most of us were able to wit-
ess. In fact, I would dare to say that the ness how quickly mobile phones
initial problems in getting the system tolling market is a evolved since they were first commer-
operational had little to do with the very dynamic and cially introduced in the 1980s. Almost
technology itself and it is highly unlikely everyone has a mobile phone now, and
that the kinds of problems faced in Ger- fascinating area to I doubt there are many people inhib-
many would be repeated elsewhere. be involved in” ited to use one due to the price of the
Just this year, there was this great new phone itself. Before long, most vehicles
airport terminal launched at Europe’s busiest airport, will be equipped with OBUs and eventually vehicle
with plenty of fanfare. This prestigious project was manufacturers will offer integrated satellite-based toll-
planned for nearly two decades. Such a project, costing ing equipment just as they offer built-in navigation sys-
US$8.5billion, is of course significantly larger than the tems today.
tolling scheme in Germany. True, satellite-based units will probably never be as
I doubt that anyone would claim that the launch of cheap as microwave tags. But we certainly can’t expect
Heathrow’s Terminal 5 went smoothly but I have yet to the cost of building and maintaining roadside equip-
hear anyone in the business of building airports say that ment to ever drop significantly. On the contrary, ambi-
the use of new technology was to blame for the prob- tious programs such as VII call for even more
lems. My guess is that the construction of modern air- infrastructure than what is currently in place just for
port terminals around the world will not come to a halt electronic tolling. With a satellite-based platform
due to this unfortunate experience. installed in the vehicles, you can have the benefit of
value-added services without any significant increase
The future is now in hardware costs. And since the underlying technolo-
The good news is that satellite-based tolling systems gies, GPS (and later also Galileo) and GSM are stand-
are finally starting to catch on. Not just trials, but real ardized, interstate and international system inter-
systems which generate real revenue. Next year, Slova- operability will be much easier to deal with.
kia will not only introduce the Euro as its currency, but I am already looking forward to the next ITS World
will also start implementing a satellite-based scheme Congress in Stockholm. I’m particularly fond of that
on its motorways and first-class roads to toll all trucks beautiful city which I got to know during my years in the
over 3.5 tons. The GPS-based On Board Units (OBUs) will telecommunications industry. But that alone is not the
be mandatory and much easier to install than their pred- reason for my enthusiasm. I am confident that a year
ecessors in Germany. These units will cost about half as from now there will be much more talk about the para-
much as the German ones and you can be sure that the digm shift currently underway in our electronic tolling
cost of satellite-based units will reduce significantly industry. And I will recall that curious remark compar-
over the next few years. ing the telecommunications industry to the transporta-
The Czech Republic introduced its microwave-based tion industry and smile. The electronic tolling market is
tolling scheme in 2007. Within months of launching the indeed a very dynamic and fascinating area to be
system, the Transportation Minister appointed an expert involved in. E
group to investigate how to best deploy satellite tech- Norbert Schindler is Global Sales Manager for
nology on its road network. It was found that the cost of Siemens Electronic Tolling. He can be contacted via
building up microwave infrastructure for tolling the email at norbert.m.schindler@siemens.com

34 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 NOVEMBER 17-19, 2009
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL
EXPO CENTER NORTE

2009 BRINGING TOGETHER

TRANSPORTATION SOLUTIONS

The biggest event in Latin America

for transportation infrastructure for
Airports, Ports, Rails and Roads

Three main themes: Management & Operations;

Safety & Security; User Comfort

The Brazilian economy remains strong and the government has confirmed that the investments
and privatizations in infrastructure will proceed despite instability of global markets

Transportation infrastructure is a priority for Brazil and other Latin American countries to
enable growth and to host FIFA World cup in 2014 and Olympic Games in 2016

Industry authorities use the event as a platform and organize strong parallel site program
with annual meetings, conferences and forums for all transportation infrastructure modalities

Expo Estádio, the event for equipping and managing stadiums and sport facilities, will be
organized in parallel to TranspoQuip Latin America

www.transpoquip.com | info@transpoquip.com
Metering

Just how
accurate is
accurate?
Accuracy is the art of being
at or near the true value. But
the true value of what? BERN
GRUSH and MICHAEL KOSIC
look at the accuracy of road-
use metering

36 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Metering

In the near future we will begin to bill operators of see there is not a single standard acceptable
motor vehicles for when, how much and where they error tolerance (variance). Time, which is one
drive (Time, Distance and Place road-use charg- of the most fundamental things we measure, admits very
ing). little error and we always seek more and more accurate
To do this, we expect to use an in-car meter and likely devices – atomic clocks with an error of 10-14 are far more
one that uses GPS or an equivalent position-and-time accurate than the watches listed in this table (10-5). On
technology. Such devices, called TDP meters, will be the other hand, the metering of blood sugar levels cur-
turning weak radio signals originating high in the rently tolerates a 20 per cent error.
atmosphere that are attenuated, deflected, and reflected One might conclude that glucose levels are not par-
into a bill that will be debited or charged on a monthly ticularly critical or that our health is not particularly sen-
basis. To make this work, TDP meters will have to do sitive to this measure [unless, of course, you are diabetic
much more than “just” read GPS or Galileo positioning - ed], but in the case of blood sugar levels, we simply do
signals in order to accurately charge users. This begs not know how to make an affordable glucose meter that
the question: just how accurate is accurate enough”? is more than 80 per cent reliable.
We can also see from Table 1 that
Measuring up “Measurement and many of the more common things we
Measurement and metering are critical pay for such as water, food, and elec-
engineering sciences that demand a metering are tricity are measured with a reliability
high standard of care, test and docu- criticial engineering exceeding 98 per cent. Because we
mentation. When you pay for water, are interested in road use metering, it
electricity, a tank of gas, or 100 grams of sciences that is natural that we study the error toler-
chocolate, you make the assumption demand high ance for odometers. Why is it so high
that you are getting exactly what you at 4 per cent? Is it because it is a volun-
paid for – perhaps a little extra in the standard of care” tary standard? Or is it because there
case of the chocolate but when your nurse is filling a are sufficient variances in driving behaviour, wheel
syringe or drip-feeding your arm, you are at the mercy radius, slippage on wet pavement and so on that make it
of accurate metering devices and their competent use difficult to design an affordable metering device that is
by the practitioners delivering the substances. able to make sufficiently reliable measure-
Table 1 shows the levels of accuracy we have come to ments to reach 98 per cent?
expect for some common things we meter.While we see Certainly, odometer readings are very
a general trend of accuracy above 95 per cent, we can important when determining a lease buy-out

Table 1: Accuracy standards for commonly

metered items (within their normal operating
ranges)
Electricity Meter, Residential (Canada) 98.5%
Glucose Meter (Blood Sugar Level, US-FDA) 80%
Grocery Scale (or non-automatic weighing device) 99%
Natural Gas, Residential (UK) 98%
Odometer (Society of Automotive Engineers Voluntary Standard) 96%
Speedometer (Society of Automotive Engineers Voluntary Standard) 98%
Water Use, Residential (US) 98.5%
Wristwatch 99.994%

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 37

Metering

or when selling a used vehicle. In this case, the odome- these 2006 trials was billing accuracy. After all, this is
ter becomes “liability critical” as Honda learned in the what really matters; trip distance and proximity to the
Spring of 2007 when it lost a class action suit based on road are just a means to that end as well as providing
evidence that odometer inaccuracy prematurely ended evidentiary credibility. TfL reported from 11.8 per cent
customers’ auto leases and service warranties. Honda to 6.7 per cent for average billing error rates, with the
refunded lease mileage overage charges and repair best performance being 0.86 per cent.
bills that should have been covered under warranty. At The conclusion the authors draw from this TfL study is
the time of settlement, Honda was expected to pay out that a least one tested unit showed great promise and
over US$20m. At the same time, Honda resolved to that our industry is on the verge of producing reliable
design to “zero error” in place of the -1 per cent to +3.75 TDP meters.
per cent odometer error they had specified prior to this, This summer, as part of the Connected Urban Devel-
based on a voluntary standard from the 1970s. opment Program, our firm worked with Cisco Systems in
If we are going to measure something on which an Seoul, Korea to test a TDP meter that is specifically
economic exchange will be based - such as road user designed to be “liability critical”. In other words, rather
charging - unnecessary measurement errors will not be than enabling a navigation-grade GPS chipset with a
accepted. Specifically, if a TDP meter underestimates processor for map-matching and price calculation and
charges, the road provider who ultimately depends on memory for recording trips and trip costs, this TDP
that revenue for building and maintenance (and profit in meter takes advantage of a number of constraint differ-
the case of a PPP) will not be satisfied. On the other hand, ences between tolling and navigation that provides for
there is no motorist who would elect to use a meter that greater position accuracy, lower data costs, faster
overcharged. A few minutes at eagerodometers.com processing time and no requirement for map-matching
sets an expectation for how “eager” TDP meters might to “repair” positioning errors. The promise made for
be greeted by class action suits. this TDP meter is “same-trip, same
“On the other hand charge.” Its design goal is 0.2 per cent
TDP metering system tests there is no motorist average billing error and 2 per cent
Tests for TDP meter accuracy since the maximum billing error on any trip over
general availability of high-sensitivity who would elect to 5km (shorter trips generally have a
GPS chipsets in consumer-grade navi- use a meter that higher relative error).
gation devices (~2003) still show a A suite of four test journeys within
high variability in results. The most overcharged” two simulated “pricing zones” was
extensive public tests made to date were those run and designed to channel test vehicles through the worst
published by Transport for London in 2006 (available urban canyon in Seoul. Multiple vehicles each equipped
online as Distance Based Charging: Report on Transport with two “Financial-Grade” TDP meters and one “Navi-
for London’s (TfL) GPS UBU Trial). This battery of tests gation-Grade” TDP meter travelled over 1000km dur-
shows the tested TDP metering devices to have accu- ing several days of tests, for a total of 3087 km of meter
racy rates for road-segment identification (a proxy for testing.
distance) ranging from 98.6 per cent down to 83.6 per The results of these trials over four test journeys
cent. Some of this variability in error depended on (routes) are in Table 2. The navigation grade TDP meter
which map-matching software was being used - which performed similarly to the majority of the meters in the
is, in itself, a red flag. 2006 TfL trials with an average billing error of 4.25 per
TfL went on to report average journey length error cent and a worse-case error of 14.3 per cent (over-
rates from 10.5 per cent to 5.4 per cent depending on charge). The financial-grade TDP meter showed con-
map-matching software. The best performing system siderable improvement, with an average billing error of
showed a journey length error of 0.82 per cent over the 0.7 per cent and a worse case error of 3.3 per cent (over-
sampled drives. But the key measure TfL looked at in charge) - this time in the same error range as the best-

Table 2: 2008 Cisco-Skymeter tests in Seoul, Korea

Route 1 Route 2 Route 3 Route 4 Summary
route length in km 8.7 8.05 7.25 32.25 Trips
Fin-grade trips (145 total) 31 36 40 38 2075 total length
Nav grade trips (75 total) 19 19 20 17 1012 total length
Fin-grade min billing error -2.1% -1.1% -1.7% 0.2% -2.1% worst min
Fin-grade mean price error -0.9% -0.3% -0.8% 0.8% 0.7% absolute weighted mean
Fin-grade max billing error 0.8% 3.3% 0.9% 1.7% 3.3% worst max
Nav-grade min billing error 0.1% 1.2% -0.3% 2.0% 2.0% worst min
Nav-grade mean price error 3.6% 4.3% 5.1% 3.9% 4.2% absolute weighted mean
Nav-grade max billing error 8.8% 10.4% 14.3% 7.7% 14.3% worst max

38 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Metering

Table 3: The behaviour of the perfect TDP meter

THE TRUTH
Where is the vehicle? Toll Road Not Toll Road
The meter Toll Road Hit (100%) False Alarm (0%)
decision Not Toll Road Miss (0%) Correct Rejection (100%)

in-class in the 2006 TfL trials. Navigation-grade TDP

meters generally overestimate charges by variable Table 4: The value of each
amounts. That would be easy to manage if the variations decision a TDP meter can make
in billing estimates were small. Unfortunately, that is not
the case and it is that variability that makes navigation-
grade meters unreliable for tolling. Hit ($1) False Alarm (-$100)
In addition to a small average error (we propose 1 per Miss (-$1) Correct Rejection ($0.01)
cent or less as a standard for RUC billing errors), our
industry will also require a small maximum error, and
for that we propose less than 2 per cent or 3 per cent on
99 per cent of journeys. way from a tolled road. A TDP meter must do much more
than correctly measure on the roads it recognizes.
Decision theory The process of determining where a vehicle is and to
Whether the designer of a charging scheme thinks in whom money is owed can be viewed as a simple deci-
terms of distance travelled within an area or of charges sion theory problem. In two-state decision theory, the
applied to specific road-segments, the goal is to have world is divided into two categories: the thing you are
uniform accuracy throughout a charging area. However, looking for and everything else. We then have four pos-
GPS can be quite inaccurate inside our cities where sible outcomes at every instance: a Hit, a False Alarm, a
buildings block and deflect signals or in landscapes Miss, and a Correct Rejection. Table 3 illustrates this for
where rock cuts or foliage can block or scatter signals. a tolled road near a non-tolled road, but this also applies
This makes uniform accuracy difficult to achieve. to two proximate roads operated by two different author-
But accurate positioning of a vehicle is only the means ities. A perfect meter would provide the numeric ratios
to an end. What we really want to meas- as given in the table in parentheses.
ure is: How much money is owed - and “Driving only on
to whom? Put another way, we really Paying by the meter
seek only three things: a way to relia- well-surveyed roads Sticking with a simple instance of two
bly charge a motorist the correct is an insufficient kinds of roads, tolled and not tolled,
amount, a way to assign that money to and assuming that all tolled roads have
the correct road provider and a way to way of testing TDP the same price and the same provider,
prove the charge was correct in the reliability” we can consider a simple value matrix
event a motorist refutes the bill. to show the value/cost of each deci-
Until now, a majority of GPS meter tests addressed two sion. Table 4 illustrates, using fictitious numbers, that a
simple questions: How close is the position estimate to False Alarm (charging for a road that was not used)
the road the vehicle is actually on , i.e., what is the aver- could be very costly if it invites motorist complaint and
age or range of distance from the road (position error), a potential for a class-action suit.We would use this kind
and how close is the computed trip distance to the actual of weighting to decide how to bias a TDP meter to reduce
distance travelled. Of course, there are several factors False Alarms. Unfortunately, when reducing False
that complicate these simple questions. Alarms, we tend to increase the portion of Misses, which
We also make the simplifying assumption that tests we also wish to reduce - especially since meter opera-
are made on roads that are accurately surveyed and tors will be involved in contracts that will guarantee rev-
whose distance is correctly known. In that case, it is con- enue to the road operators or governments.
ceptually simple to drive with a TDP meter, monitor But even this is a simplification. We can expect that in
position and distance travelled and compare those val- some countries or continents there will be many paid
ues against the “truth” for accuracy and consistency. But road operators and many state, provincial, county or
it is also possible to drive a vehicle near such accurately regional road operators. As TDP pricing replaces other
surveyed roads and this can lead to problems – espe- taxes, each such player will want to be sure that it is
cially when using map-matching. receiving its entitlement of revenue and motorists using
For example: what happens when we drive from a those roads will want to be sure they are not overpaying
tolled road into a new, unpriced subdivision that is not by accidentally paying the wrong (and higher-priced)
yet updated on our map? Or drive on an unmapped (and road operator.
unpriced) farm laneway parallel to a priced interurban For example, the French government is planning a
highway? Or drive into an untolled parking lot or drive- per-kilometre tax on all trucks over a certain size on all

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetcc Vol 3 No 4 39

Metering

Just how accurate is accurate?

its national highways. There are already about 8400 km for Correct Rejection and especially False Alarm. This is
of tolled French highways built and operated by ten something that map-matching does very poorly.
road operators. To address this, a TDP meter must distin-
guish among these ten operators’ facilities and the The current position
French national roadways. When the currently untolled All things considered, driving only on well-surveyed
roadways become taxed, the existing tolled roads will roads, recognizing mapped road segments and calcu-
retain the same tolls as before. This means 11 or more lating distance is an insufficient way of testing a TDP
parties will receive revenue as determined by a single meter’s reliability. We will need to address GPS (and
TDP meter and there will be many places where one of Galileo) positioning errors in ways far more effective
the existing tolled roads is near, intersects or crosses than those used for consumer navigation. This includes
over the newly taxed national roads. both additional processing and intelligent geographic
Hence Table 4 is an obvious simplification and the information system functions to defeat the noisy nature
requirement for a near-ideal TDP meter (Table 3) of GPS multipath - all while testing and treating False
becomes clearer. To test such a device, we must simu- Alarms and Misses with the same diligence as Hits and
late multiple charging zones or multiple roadways that Correct Rejections.
are operated by multiple road owners. This needs to be A comment on the Measurement Canada website
set up to test the ability of a TDP meter to maximize Hits sums it up nicely: “Although it is impossible to attain
and Correct Rejections and minimize False Alarms and perfect accuracy, it is possible to control the magnitudes
Misses all among several road-owners, several charg- of measurement errors to acceptable levels through a
ing schemes, including roads and areas that are not system of organized activities.” E
charged.
If the scheme under consideration does not contem- Michael Kosic is contactable via email at
plate charging for driving on private roadways (field, mkosic@xyzinteractive.com and Bern Grush at
trails, parking lots, driveways) then those must be tested bgrush@skymetercorp.com

40 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

FROM MOTORWAYS ...
... TO CITIES

INVEST IN THE FUTURE. INVEST IN TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT FROM SATELLIC.

No diìerence. But a change nevertheless. Satellic Traïc Management
shapes tomorrow’s mobility today. With innovative traïc management.
With people ready to take one step into the future every single day.
INTELLIGENT ROAD PRICING. BECAUSE MOBILITY MATTERS.

SEE MORE OF OUR VISION AT: WWW.SATELLIC.COM

Congestion Charging

The
power
of 10... Attention, pop pickers! ANDY GRAHAM charts the
congestion charging top 10...

“When we talk
about road
charging we use
terminology that is
completely
inaccessible”

42 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Congestion Charging

At H3B Media’s recent European Congestion erroneous costs for charging and privacy problems.
Management Think Tank, there was a healthy When we do talk about road charging, we use termi-
debate in two areas. nology that is completely inaccessible - such as talk of
Firstly, does the public really understand congestion “marginal social cost” and “internalising external
charging, or are they convinced it is just another stealth costs.” When policy is discussed, we talk about EC
tax? Opinions differed, reflecting the diverse audience 2004/52 and EETS. And when we talk technology, it really
and the many countries represented. But the second is all letters and numbers. Is it any wonder we cannot
area - have we tried our best to help the public under- counter such negative publicity?
stand - showed we have far to go. We should have a far Where is the single authoritative source of clear and
more active role in overcoming some of the misconcep- understandable messages about road charging, availa-
tions, half-truths and downright lies out there. Even if we ble to those best placed to exploit it? Well, Wikipedia is
cannot actively “sell” our business for political reasons, not a bad place to start and someone with good knowl-
we should present a clear statement of fact when others edge has been working there, but we should not rely on
challenge us. volunteers (for, as Homer Simpson pointed out, they
As an example, in the UK, a petition posted to the Prime don’t even get paid).
Minister’s website in 2007 attracted 1.7m signatures So here goes with my attempt, in time-honoured
from the British public, alerted by an email claiming reverse order, at the congestion charging top 10...

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 43

Congestion Charging

10. Tolling roads is not a new even if you disagree with global warming, deep down
idea. you know building more roads is not the answer. You
Even those countries like the UK for which a tolled also know it costs you more to go on holiday in August,
motorway is a relatively new idea resorted to tolls for buy a plane ticket for morning peak travel and a whole
funding new bridges and tunnels this way many years host of other “pay for what you get” services. Yet we
ago. But many current European roads were originally have not been strong enough in selling the positive
tolled. “Turnpikes” – originally a spiked barrier in or changes that occur after congestion charges have been
across a road but now used to refer to a road with a toll- deployed. Traffic in London may have returned to the
gate - ran in England from 1706 until the 1870s. So the congestion levels of five years ago, but what would it
idea of potentially charging for road use “as you go” has have been like with five years of unrestrained growth?
not just been thought up, it has been defrosted. We should focus on the long term congestion
reduction from charging and give hard evidence -
9. There is actually quite a Singapore, Stockholm, Malta, Durham and Milan as well
big difference between a toll as London.
road and a Congestion But with an economic downturn, levels of congestion
Charge may ease. Voters will be tempted to put congestion
Tolling a road pays for the construction and then opera- charging down the agenda compared to other issues of
tion and maintenance of infrastructure. By virtue of good a recession, only for it to be needed rapidly once the
design and pricing, toll roads generally give a high economy picks up. Congestion charging cannot be
quality service to drivers and hauliers (toll operators do allowed to die if short-term issues camouflage its longer-
not like queues, as customers will not see an advantage term need.
in paying tolls).
A congestion charge is instead a specific charge for 6. DSRC delivers.
use of roads that reflects the congestion that user con- There are now many freeflow systems around the globe
tributes to the network. They are not the same as tolls, for motorway charging and proven technology for urban
but to the road user they can seem the same (you pay and national truck charging. Pilot schemes are still
money and the roads run better). We need to be careful needed to overcome some local issues and concerns
not to mix up the two. over privacy and interoperability. But there are enough
OBUs, gantries and enforcement tickets issued every
8. Congestion Charging is day across the globe using DSRC to say we have a stable
not a new idea, either - it is product.
just that technology now
helps us deliver it. 5. Anonymous charging is
The UK government published the Smeed Report in possible - but who wants it?
1964) which laid down principles such as: Many authorities have gone to considerable efforts to
The road user should pay the costs that he (women obvi- allow users to have anonymous charging. Satellite posi-
ously didn’t drive then) imposes upon others, namely road tioning can be deployed so all the computations are
costs, congestion and social costs. Costs undertaken in the OBU, so no other
should be related to the amount of use “Congestion organisation knows where the user
made of the roads and vary according to has been.
the location, time, and type of vehicle. charging cannot be This has been demonstrated in Can-
Cities should be zoned, with costs ris- allowed to die if ada, in German and Swiss lorry
ing to 10 shillings per hour of driving in schemes and in a trial in Oregon, USA.
the centre of London or Cambridge [that short-term issues But few users have taken it up once
is 50p or 60cents, not allowing for infla- camouflage its they realise that it is easier and often
tion] and costs should be stable and cheaper to have a single account deb-
known in advance. Payment in advance longer-term need” ited at source and not have to top up
of travel should be possible. with a credit card.
This was in the days when the most technologically As schemes roll out, the objections about privacy
advanced equipment in the car was an AM radio. We seem to be overcome (has anyone actually been caught
have only recently had technology available to widely having an affair by road user charging?) CCTV is more
apply these ideas and, more importantly, the political intrusive than charging and your cell phone can be used
will to tackle the problem. to track you.
. And as anyone taken the mobile telephone operators
7. Congestion Charging is to court for knowing when they are “roving”? The prob-
there for a reason… lem is not the capability of a charging device, but the
congestion. intention and the objective of its deployment.
Even the most committed petrolhead agrees that con- Let’s remember there is no such thing as “satellite
gestion will ever get better on its own (although I under- tracking”. Satellite-based systems do not watch vehi-
stand an article that will appear in Thinking Highways’ cles, they simply work out where the vehicle is using
first issue of 2009 will attempt to show that it will). And clever maths. There is no spy in the sky.

44 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Congestion Charging

4. Yes, you can have a single 2. Trucks are different

bill as you travel across from cars.
Europe. Across Europe, many authorities are already charging
Although there are different on-board units in use, work for trucks to use their roads on a pay as you go principle.
such as eToll service provided by Egis Projects in This has the political and fiscal advantage of obtaining
Ireland and the Eurotoll service provided across Europe revenue from foreign transit trucks that otherwise might
by Sanef show this can be overcome by providing a sin- travel “for free”.
gle integrated bill. Provided the deal is “fair”, truck operators support
We as an industry don’t make enough the distribution of cost. The key is to
“We should focus
of the ability to piggyback other serv- have a simple system that costs as little
on the long term
ices on this bill – fleet management and as possible to deploy, with easy to
secure parking for example are added understand occasional user schemes,
congestion
value services becoming available, but strong enforcement and inter-opera-
reduction from
what about buying fuel too? bility.

3. Charging can be charging and give 1. Over to you...

simple! hard evidence” This magazine is all about thinking
The decision to make London Conges- and debate so what would your number
tion Charge a daily payment (so increasing the effort one be? Send them through to kevin@h3bmedia.com or
needed to make the charge) was a timely one, as it made andy@whitewillow.biz. There will be a prize for any that
it not so much a fiscal penalty to drive into London but we use. E
also suggested an “If you can’t be bothered, take the bus
instead” message. Andy Graham is principal of White Willow Consulting,
But as technology and other services have deployed, based in Surrey, UK
ease of payment (perhaps on a monthly basis) now
dominates the market and we should pass this message Many thanks to experts who helped with some ideas,
on. Microwave devices can be put in vehicles without especially Bruno Corthier of Sanef, Steve Morello of
any power supply - having a life of five years or more. Egis Projects and Duncan Matheson of PA Consulting.

AustriaTech is a policy instrument of the Austrian Federal Ministry for

Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit) for developing the opti-
mum co-operative beneÆts from telematics applications in the Æeld of
transport and trafÆc.
Trafic must jow.
Our contribution: know-how.

Donau-City-Strasse 1, 1220 Vienna

Tel. +43 1 26 33 444, Fax +43 1 26 33 444-10 AustriaTech – Federal Agency
ofÆce@austriatech.org | www.austriatech.org for Technological Measures Ltd.

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetcc Vol 3 No 4 45

Dutch Road Pricing

Dutch
courage
MIGUEL ANGEL MARTINEZ OLAGUE reflects on the Dutch Road
Pricing project (ABvM) from an industry perspective

Setting up what will be the world’s first ever nation- likely to happen in the case of the Dutch project, judging
wide, all-vehicle road-pricing system without doubt from the minister’s declarations of the following tenor in
calls for unflinching leadership and unflagging his letter: “I do realise, however, that these statements
determination. provide no absolute guarantee for me or for the Lower
These qualities were all to the fore in the letter sent on House that a system will be operating on time in an open
27 June by the Dutch Transport Minister to the President market, suited to serving millions of road users”
of the Lower House of the States of the Netherlands. Sel- Along those lines I would like to make some observa-
dom does a Transport Minister provide parliament with tions on the Dutch project as detailed in the aforemen-
such a clear-sighted technical description of the chal- tioned letter.
lenges to be tackled and surmounted in bringing an
ambitious project to a successful conclusion. From this Feasible and reasonable?
point of view the letter is a valuable document pinpoint- Past experience in systems engineering and develop-
ing all the main challenges to be addressed by the ment down the ages has shown us that the first essential
responsible public authority. step, a sine qua non of further progress, is to clearly
All too often in recent times the interaction between define system requisites. On occasions it will be neces-
industry, consultants and public authorities has tended sary for the authority and suppliers to conduct studies
to spawn overly optimistic implementation plans, espe- and previous testing programs, repeated with sufficient
cially in the case of groundbreaking projects that pose frequency to ensure the technical feasibility of these
stiff technological challenges. Witness the difficulties requisites, but it will always be the authority itself that
experienced by the German HBV toll system in keeping has the last word on the final applicable requisites.
up with the original deadline. An “Emperor’s New Without this spadework it would be somewhat rash to
Clothes” syndrome comes into play here. Politicians speak of project feasibility or an implementation time-
wish to set up a trailblazing system in record time while table, and it is therefore surprising to find that some
the firms themselves show a certain corner-cutting lax- companies have already ensured the feasibility of the
ity in their keenness to win a multi-million-euro project Dutch project. How is it possible for a product to be
amidst fierce competition. This certainly does not look deemed to meeting required performance specifica-

46 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Dutch Road Pricing

tions if these have not yet been defined? There is a clear requisites are going to serve this purpose successfully it
need for including a clear requisite-defining stage in is essential, as already pointed out, for them to be for-
the minister’s scheduled plan. It would above all be cru- mulated as strictly as possible beforehand and to be
cial for this requisite-defining stage to be completed assigned reference values giving them a unique and
before putting the various elements out to tender. measurable definition in all the abovementioned proc-
Although the Minister’s letter reflects the importance of esses, thus ensuring uniformity of use by all involved
strictly defining certain requisites, it is not made clear parties.
how this would be done or in which stage of the plan. It should be stressed here that the concept of accuracy
As well as the timetabling implications of the requi- alone is clearly insufficient for defining what is to be
site-defining process, the requisites and their associ- expected of a system with these characteristics. As
ated legal aspects need to be studied from a technical clearly expressed in the letter, it needs to be rounded
perspective. It is indeed gladdening to find a political out with other parameters measuring reliability and
document so clearly specifying the importance of a ensuring correctness of the load calculation.
closely related set of three elements, namely: the per- As far as the application of satellite navigation is con-
formance and reliability requisites, the certification cerned, and especially in the field of civil aviation, this
process and the legal aspects bound up with any system additional parameter is clearly identified and denomi-
failure and concomitant claims. Civil aviation has for- nated as “Integrity”.
malized these processes, especially in the field of navi- Integrity is defined as: “a measure of trust which can
gation, and it might well be worthwhile tapping into this be placed in the correctness of information supplied by
pool of experience when setting up the Dutch system. the total system.” In practice this means that the system
has to be capable of identifying with a high degree of
Accurate and reliable? probability when this error is above a certain threshold.
As regards the performance requisites, the document This probability and the threshold also need to be spec-
mentions different concepts such as accuracy and reli- ified. This concept has nothing to do with the “Data
ability and also mentions the “correct settlement in the Integrity”, which refers to the assurance that the data
final totals”. The purpose of these requisites is to serve are not modified throughout the various processes
as specifications not only during the tendering and con- involved, especially during communications.
tract-awarding process but also during system valida- In the case of a distance-based charging system with
tion and certification and, as need be, SLA-based different charging fees per zones this Integrity concept
compliance measurement during operations. If these involves two different and essential requirements: on

“In recent times the

interaction
between industry,
consultants and
public authorities
has tended to
spawn overly
optimistic
implementation
plans”

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 47

Dutch Road Pricing

the one hand the capacity of identifying that the charg- trigger-happy criticism:“Why should we pay for using a
ing calculation error is not above a certain value (e.g. road network when we have already paid for its con-
1 per cent of the real value) with a very high probability struction with our taxes? This is just another money-rais-
(close to 100 per cent) and on the other hand the capac- ing exercise! The well-off can pollute as much as they
ity of guaranteeing that zone identification is correctly like! Traffic congestion is insufferable without paying
performed with an even higher probability (closer to for it as well!”
100 per cent).
The need of these requirements is two-fold: in the first Green thinking
place they concern system credibility and its social Another major concern clearly reflected in the letter is
acceptance and secondly the data’s validity as irrefuta- the transition process from the current situation to the
ble judicial proof in the case of any claim or litigation. fully-implemented, up-and-running road pricing
We understand that this is exactly what is being referred system. Launching a preliminary voluntary scheme to
to when the letter says: “I conclude that 99 per cent act as a transition to the future obligatory scheme would
accuracy can be demanded from the system, while the be a solution. This would cut down the political risk and
assumption of the proposed law is nearly 100 per cent.” help to phase in the system gradually.
The scheme would work as follows. New-vehicle pur-
Perfect asymmetry chasers would be offered a refund of part of their
Another important factor to bear in mind here is the already-paid conventional taxes upon trading in the
built-in asymmetry in the definition of these requisites, vehicle in the future. This sum, or green check, would be
inasmuch as overcharging errors should have a much calculated automatically from the data furnished by an
lower probability than undercharging OBU fitted by permission of vehicle
errors. In other words the most strin- “The most stringent owners when opting into the scheme.
gent system-definition requisite is The value of the green check would
ensuring that the overcharging likeli- system-definition depend on the vehicle type and the
hood is very close to zero. Judging from requisite is mileage clocked up throughout its use-
experience in other electronic tolling ful life in those areas or thoroughfares
systems, this overcharging should be ensuring that the and timebands that have been defined
lower than 1 in 10,000 so that the prob- overcharging and published as high congestion (rush
ability referred to in the letter should hours-zones). If the vehicle use is lower
be at least 99.99 per cent. likelihood is very than the average, the difference is
Regarding zone identification, the close to zero” refunded to the user as a discount on
probability of a false identification applicable taxes in the purchase of the
(leading to the application of a higher fee) should be new vehicle.
even higher with values near 99.9999 per cent (one false This scheme would be a real incentive for vehicle
inside-zone identification in 1,000,000) because of its owners not to use them in rush hours; as such it could
higher impact on user perception of system credibility. chime in with what the Ministry defines as “Mobility
As a matter of fact this requisite is also recognized by the Projects”. Furthermore, system implementation is vol-
expert group for the European Electronic Fee Collec- untary and gradual rather than a new government impo-
tion standardization process where they identify that sition, unlike a national toll system. This is an aspect
“False recognition of a geo-object [zone] should be less weighing heavily in favor of this idea, avoiding what
than 1 in 1,000,000” might otherwise be undesired side effects of the transi-
It is easy to see how compliance with these requisites tion from the current taxation system to a tolling system,
depends in turn on setting similarly strict requisites for such as a slump in vehicle sales as would-be buyers
GPS-based positioning calculations, since these under- abide their time until the new scheme comes in.
pin the various charging calculation processes. In other
words the receiver has to guarantee performance nor- Level best
mally defined by the community of satellite navigation In conclusion, the success of a project as ambitious as
experts as “position Integrity.” A recommendation here the Dutch one depends heavily on the establishment of
is to adhere to this definition, since it allows assurance of clearly defined performance requisites in a pre-
all the matters of concern to the minister in his letter and tendering stage. These would include specification of
has been accepted for years by the expert satellite-nav- minimum performance in standard terms of accuracy,
igation community (especially by Civil Aviation). integrity and availability. Implementation should also
be phased in by means of a preliminary voluntary
Public acceptability scheme whereby users are refunded part of their con-
Finally there is another aspect that strikes us as impor- ventional taxes if rush-hour vehicle use is below a set
tant in the feasibility of a project such as the Dutch one, level. E
namely its social, and ipso facto political, acceptance.
There is no doubt that public authorities see a signifi- Miguel Angel Martinez Olague is corporate
cant political risk in launching a tolling system of this development director at GMV, based in Madrid.
type. They are wary of the difficulties of getting the He can be contacted via email at
system across properly and defending it from the most mmartinez@gmv.com

48 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

The future of tolling.

www.skymetercorp.com
Cashless Transactions

Who moved
my customer?

Is it really time to say farewell to the toll booth?

And is it also time to say sayonara to cash?
BOB McQUEEN, rather fond of both entities, is
preparing for a painful goodbye...

50 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Cashless Transactions

“I’ve always viewed

the use of cash as a
necessary yet
undesirable side
effect of operating
a pay-per-use
transportation
facility”

There is an undeniable trend towards truly open road and transit operators alike. So you would think that
road tolling in the US today. I would have no compunction in waving our square
While the dedicated short range communications friends goodbye. And yet a niggling wave of nostalgia
(DSRC) technologies involved have always been capa- sweeps over me as I think about the end of the toll
ble of supporting this, the associated enforcement sys- booth.
tems are now good enough and sufficiently trusted to Why? Good or bad, the toll booth was a customer
cause the demise of the toll booth. Express lanes abound interface. It was a point of contact between the operator
and some agencies have even committed to a com- and the customer. At the toll booth you could ask direc-
pletely cashless future. In transit agencies around the tions, perhaps even receive a free map of the local toll
world we are also seeing an unprecedented investment road network, make change and exchange pleasantries
in electronic payment systems that make use of smart with a cheerful, helpful member of staff. All the while,
card technologies and near field communications for your fellow travelers in the queue behind you seemed to
fare payment. Are we seeing the beginning of the end of join in this idyll by waving at you and making hand ges-
that challenging mix of cash and transportation? tures indicating that they thought that you were number
I’ve always viewed the use of cash as a necessary, yet one!
undesirable, side effect of operating a pay-per-use Seriously, the loss of a customer interface should be
transportation facility. The traffic disruption caused by evaluated in any business to determine the likely impact
toll plaza queues, the boarding delays caused on transit on the ability to service the customer and support
vehicles and the expense and difficulty of handing sub- enhanced service levels. In the case of toll plazas and
stantial volumes of cash pose tough challenges to toll toll booths there were some extremely negative aspects

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 51

Cashless Transactions

of the particular interface. Having to select the appro-

priate lane at the toll plaza, the need to slow down and
stop, the chances of a crash caused by driver confusion
or distraction, having to fumble for cash. These are all in
the past as we drive towards truly open road tolling
using a combination of DSRC transponders and video
image processing for license plate recognition.

Money is out of the office...

While many agencies have left a few cash lanes in place,
others have committed to what I would call “zero cash”.
It’s not that we don’t accept cash in payment for use of
our toll roads, it’s just that we don’t want to deal with it at
the roadside any more. This perhaps means that our toll
plaza customer interface hasn’t vanished completely;
it’s just gone to a better place, but who moved my
customer?
This thought about a change in the customer interface
caused me to take an analytical look at the points at
which a toll agency interfaces with or touches its cus-
tomers. I came up with a very simple graphical view as
shown in the figure.
The boundary between the toll agency and the cus-
tomer is represented by the curve and the dots indicate
the points where a customer interface is possible. Rep-
resenting it in this simple way enables a clear picture of
the customer boundary in which the number and nature
of the customer touch points can be examined. In this
rather primitive example there are a number of possi-
ble customer touch points.
There are several touch points that have the potential
to be predominantly positive or negative depending on
the nature of the transaction conducted across the chan-
nel and the way in which the encounter is handled. It
occurs to me that the quality of the overall interaction
with the customer could be actively managed by taking
this type of approach to understanding the nature and
number of the interfaces, the resources applied to each
and the training/instructions provided to agency staff
that both support and manage the interface. Perhaps by
color coding the dots according to the likely customer
perception of the interface – green for positive, amber
for neutral and red for negative?
One way to look at this is in terms of the “return on toll”
delivered to the customer through these interfaces. This
could be an actual monetary value of benefits and a cus-
tomer perception of value. I would argue that both are
equally important in communication customer value Personal visit to customer Figure 1: When a toll agency
and service. service center
‘touches” its customers
Interactive voice
response system

Accentuating the positive Telephone call

Another interesting and related aspect to the demise of
the toll plaza is the new approach to customers that Universal traffic citation

chose not to pay by transponder or cash. In the past Incident management

Toll
these customers may well have been classified as viola- Enterprise
tors and subject to the negative customer touch point Dynamic message sign

called violation enforcement. Today you could well Roadside service patrol
Transponder
argue that there is no such thing as a violation and those newsletter
Traffic and
Account -re
survey installation

loading and
customers can now be treated as premium customers highway
operations
balance check

that have elected to pay an additional fee in return for a

more convenient way to pay.

52 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Cashless Transactions

It is also worth noting the positive revenue implica-

“Violators can now tions of this shift since toll agencies typically don’t get to
be treated as keep the fines for violations, but can certainly keep the
premium fee for service.
premium customers So what’s the point of this insight into the loss or move-
that have elected to ment of a customer service interface? Simply that such
interface opportunities are precious and should be cul-
pay an additional tured to be a positive experience as far as possible.
fee in return for a Active interface management is another intriguing
possibility, perhaps by applying some of the saved
more convenient resources from toll plaza operations to renewed efforts
way to pay” to raise the quality of the other interfaces.
Perhaps a dimension of this quality lies also in the con-
sistency of the service quality and organizational mes-
sage that is supported and projected across such
interfaces. Is the quality of our dynamic message sign
messages consistent with the quality of our interactive
voice response system and our roadside courtesy
patrols?
We have the opportunity to apply advanced technolo-
gies to turn our toll operations into anonymous faceless
enterprises, or glorious examples of technology
enabled human-centric service. I like the concept of a
local toll agency that collects tolls and delivers a local,
clearly understood return on toll by investing in better
infrastructure and enhanced services through a custom-
ized blend of asphalt, concrete, steel, technology and
people.

Dream on
This brings me to my technology nightmare.We are see-
ing the emergence of wide area charging approaches
that take advantage of GNSS location technologies and
wireless telecommunications. In the USA there is already
serious discussion about the use of the WAVE 5.9GHz
standard to support nationwide toll collection, conges-
tion charging and managed lanes. In Europe the devel-
opment of the Galileo satellite location system has
spurred similar discussions.
While this would make toll collection much easier and
take some of the burden of device distribution, manage-
ment and perhaps even revenue collection from the toll
agency, I have a concern.This emerging ability to charge
anywhere at any time based on distance traveled, loca-
tion and time could enable a “charge anything that
moves” revenue generation strategy with the money
going into some sort of central exchequer for re-
distribution to non-transportation and non-highway
purposes such as education, healthcare and social wel-
fare. The benign and familiar ‘transportation republic’
that collects revenue then re-applies it back to the local
network would be redundant in this scenario.
My old friend the toll booth is gone; the age of the vio-
lator has been replaced by the age of the premium cus-
tomer, so is the decline and fall of the transportation
republic on the horizon? That would indeed mean the
loss of a very dear friend and cause me to utter those
words: “Who moved my customer?” e
Bob McQueen is growth leader with the 0Cash
Company. He can be contacted via email at
bobmcqueen@0cash.com

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetcc Vol 3 No 4 53

Technology

These
goalposts
are not for
moving
DAVE MARPLES’ hypothetical wishlist for a
technology-led road pricing future

Did you know, there’s no requirement for your car to grated the new functionality as normal behaviour.
have indicators? At least, not in the UK if it was built This approach mostly works well (when was the last
before 1936. Similarly there’s no requirement for time you got into a car that didn’t have seatbelts?) but
seatbelts, parking brakes or even a windscreen there’s always a long tail of laggards, the ‘vintage vehi-
depending on the year of manufacture and a few cles’, that never update, with the result that our road sys-
other minor factors. tems have to deal with vehicles that may be many
The reasons for this are obvious: we shouldn’t go mov- generations out of date.... I wonder how many tail-end
ing the goalposts for equipment that’s already out in the shunts are as a result of the vehicle in front having ABS
field, so we simply update the requirements that new and the vehicle behind not having it?
vehicles have to meet and wait for population erosion to Sometimes of course we mandate updates by means
do the rest . Pretty soon the greater part of the old vehi- of retrofit (the London Low Emissions Zone being a good
cles are on the scrapheap and the population has inte- example) but that tends to only be done under very

54 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

 Technology

www.thinkinghighways.com ETCetc Vol 3 Issue 4 55

Technology

restricted circumstances and one would certainly hope of applications. If we can standardise it a little bit we’d
that a long time is spent deliberating before any deci- end up with a mandated, secure, reliable and maintained
sion to impose mandatory costs on road users is taken. platform in every single vehicle on the road.... I want the
In Information Technology terms this whole issue of word ‘flexible’ on that list too. I’m not suggesting that
how to deal with the existing population when integrat- one size will fit all, there will be a whole range of devices
ing new functionality is known as the Legacy Systems meeting the platform specification with different addi-
Problem. tional capabilities - just like the PC on the desktop, but
In that world you can sometimes solve it by mandating hopefully a little more reliable.
updates within a certain period of time, or by ceasing
support for old versions, but sometimes you just have to Cost versus benefit
live with it and suffer the additional costs and perform- Just because we’re technically capable of doing some-
ance restrictions it burdens you with - a 1930s telephone thing doesn’t mean it will happen... although, as an engi-
will still let you make a phone call on most land tele- neer, I’d love it that it were so. The biggest problem with
phone networks in the world, for example. doing all of this is the business justification - the people
So, five paragraphs in, why on earth am I ranting on that will get the benefits aren’t necessarily the ones who
about technology migrations and the telephone net- will incur the costs. The biggest single task is to build
work in an electronic toll collection and road pricing market mechanisms that ensure that deploying a perva-
magazine? Well, we’re actually in an interesting situa- sive compute platform in vehicles, on the back of road
tion – to a first approximation pretty much any tolling charging, is actually of benefit for all of the participants,
system in the world that demands an in-vehicle compo- and that’s not trivial.
nent will need similar functionality in terms of location I suspect it’s a forlorn hope – we will do our usual thing
detection, processing capability, communications, of paring the platform down to the bone and selecting
memory and some form of display. cost optimised designs which can just about meet the
Not only that but the device will be mandatory for single application demands made of them with no option
almost all of the vehicles in theatre and there will be for any future expansion or re-purposing.
mechanisms deployed to ensure it’s there and working I can only hope that since our bankers and account-
properly and to get it repaired when it
breaks... to all intents and purposes
“Just because we’re ants have completely discredited
themselves with their overly simplistic
the device will be there, and will work. technically capable financial models and overly complex
Doesn’t it seem a shame to go to all of
that effort, just for road charging?
of doing something derivations we might actually be able
to do things for good engineering and
doesn’t mean it will societal reasons in the same way that
The not-so secret migration
The deployment of a tolling system
happen” our ancestors gave us sewers, bridges
and underground train systems with-
means that, for one of only a very few times in our his- out looking for a three-year Return on Investment.
tory, we can achieve an almost pervasive technology
migration over the course of a single generation of vehi- Added value
cles and, not only that, mandate the retrofit of the exist- Finally, I could argue that this versatile device might
ing population... in the space of a couple of years we can actually make the deployment of a road charging solu-
deploy a platform into every vehicle in theatre and have tion easier, since instead of it just being a means for
the mechanisms to make sure it stays there. The oppor- extracting money from the driver, we might actually be
tunity for new applications to exploit that platform are able to offer him some significant benefit - a platform
immense. that’s versatile enough might actually encourage
A few years ago I was quite heavily involved in an ini- adoption.
tiative to create an environment for these kinds of flexi- It’s my tolling device but it’s also a SatNav, a speed
ble, long life, highly reliable applications known as the warning device, a fuel economy meter and a vehicle
Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi). The European maintenance monitor - and I saw a couple of cool appli-
Union Global System for Telematics (GST) project cations on the ‘net the other night that I want to try out. E
extended and specialised it for in-vehicle use.
Both of those were Java-based (and I will confess to Dr Dave Marples is Chief Scientist of Technolution B.V.
some concerns about the use of Java in this environ- of Gouda, NL (www.technolution.eu) where he is
ment) but the ideas and concepts are applicable no involved in work on Road Charging, ITS applications and
matter what languages you chose for implementation. Weigh in Motion technology. He was the Chief Architect
I would highly recommend that anyone looking at devel- of the EU GST programme (www.gstforum.org) and was
oping an in-vehicle tolling unit take a long hard look at the Executive Director and Architecture Chair of the
that work to take advantage of some of the lessons we OSGi (www.osgi.org).
learned.
My argument is simple; the components that are in His background is in communication systems technol-
that hypothetical in-vehicle tolling unit; a GPS, comms, ogy and he is Honorary Professor of Communications at
processor, a display and some storage are pretty much Stirling University in Scotland
the same components you need for a whole wide range (www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~djm).

56 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

CARE, COMPASSION
AND CONCERN ON
THE FREEWAY

Some of the differences between Samaritania Incorporated’s service patrol programs and others:

01 Our patrol vehicle operators have state and 07 Provide the widest variety of quick 14 All program service costs included in
national public safety certifications. clearance, motorist, and public safety single patrol hourly billing rate.
02 We provide a complete turnkey program at assistance. 15 Operators adhere to detailed conduct
not cost to motorists. 08 Provide a variety of different custom service policies
03 Provide Internet based Fleet Management patrol vehicles with and without tow 16 Standard Operation Procedure
Systems. capabilities. Development
04 Provide public safety grade AVL/GPS incident 09 Endorsed by Departments of Transportation 17 Local office and project management
recording/reporting systems. and State Governments. 18 Provide Complete Indemnification and
05 Personnel, vehicles, equipment, AVL/GPS, 10 Endorsed by State Police, Fire/Rescue, hold harmless agreements.
patrol dispatch centers, and public relation and other public safety agencies. 19 Provide audited financial resources.
programs. 11 National award winning programs. 20 Operators have perfect no-fault safety
06 The most experienced provider. Over 12 Consistent media recognition. records. Zero fatalities.
27 years providing service patrol 13 Rural, remote area, and urban program 21 Private Sector funding available to
programs throughout the U.S. applications. offset costs.

Samaritania Incorporated,
10 Riverside Drive, Lakeville, MA 02347, USA
Tel: +1-508-947-3700
Fax: +1-508-947-5544
www.freewayservicepatrol.com
info@freewayservicepatrol.com
Comment

EETS:
shoots and
leaves
As many readers will probably be aware, in 2004 the
European Union adopted a Directive on “The Inter-
operability Of Electronic Road Toll Systems In The
Community” (2004/52/EC). The purpose of this ena-
bling Directive was to provide the path to the practi-
cal delivery of interoperability in European
electronic road tolling systems. This was to facili-
To head towards a brave new tate the movement of goods across the Union with a
single On-Board Unit per vehicle and a single road
interoperable future, the charging account provided by an ‘EETS Provider’.
European Commission must The legislation made provision for a Regulatory Com-
mittee of Member States, chaired by the Commission
demonstrate that there is a (the Comité Télépéage), to take a Decision on the defi-
viable business case for the nition of the European Electronic Toll System (EETS) by
European Electronic Toll 1 July 2006.
Most importantly the Directive stated that “Such deci-
Service, says DUNCAN sions shall only be taken if all the conditions, evaluated
MATHESON on the basis of appropriate studies, are in place to ena-
ble interoperability to work from all points of view,
including technical, legal and commercial”.

Somewhere a clock is ticking

The implications of any Decision are that this would set
an ‘implementation clock’ ticking, requiring the EETS to
be delivered to HGV (over 3.5 tons) owners and interna-

60 Vol 3 Issue 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

Comment

tional coach owners who wished to use such a service stakeholders

within three years, and to any vehicle owner within five • Establish a Memorandum of Understanding to
years. support business, data, process and payment-means
The Directive also enshrined the technologies that interoperability between all schemes to be part of the
were to be used for electronic charging, limiting these EETS
to Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) at • Demonstrate the cost benefit of the EETS and
5.8GHz, Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GNSS), clarify who is paying for its provision and operation
and Cellular Networks (CN) using GPRS. In part, this Encourage scheme operators to develop interoperable
was due to the Commission’s frustration at the slow systems and procedures
progress on standards development within European • Assess the extent to which Business Models can
Standards bodies, but was also seen by many as an be reconciled or a new paradigm created
opportunity to promote the implementation of the Gali- • Quantify the capital and operating costs, and
leo satellite positioning system. the time necessary to migrate to a future operational
Since the Directive’s adoption, the Commission environment, where interoperability between systems
appointed a number of Expert Groups to look into, and to support international billing (and potentially enforce-
report upon, a range of topics that were seen as being ment) can be delivered
necessary to help with the definition of the system. To • Determine the most effective form of data clear-
date, there have been some 12 or so such groups cover- ing between the separate schemes across and within
ing such areas as: national borders
Create the conditions for defining and developing the
• Group 1 - DSRC Technologies Universal On-Board Unit
• Group 2 - Classification of vehicles • Incorporate Directive-specified technologies
• Group 3 - Enforcement of EETS as a minimum
• Group 4 - Certification of Equipment • Meet agreed Standards (some do not exist)
• Group 5 – GNSS/CN technologies for EFC • Support interoperability (roaming, charging,
payment acceptance, performance)
In addition, the Commission has funded work on the However, the majority of these issues have not been
CESARE III and CESARE IV Projects led by ASECAP (the satisfactorily and definitively addressed in the mean-
European Association of Toll Road Operators) with the time, and there is now a serious international risk that
support of Member States to look in more detail at the pressure will be brought to bear to agree a Decision
elements necessary to aid the definition of the EETS. prematurely.
CESARE IV is due to complete its work by the time this Work on international standards to support EETS is
issue goes to press or in early 2009. being undertaken through CEN but progress is slow
The Commission has also funded work on the Road and there is still some substantive effort required before
Charging Interoperability (RCI) Project, led by ERTICO, such standards are approved which can then be refer-
which completed its final report in 2008. enced from within any Commission decision.
However, all is not rosy in the EETS garden. Consequently, with the Commission understood to be
seeking a Decision in the next few months, the question
Stockholm syndrome is “What has to be done to ensure that this is not done
As should now be clear, the July 2006 “Decision dead- prematurely?” There is a real and urgent need for the
line” passed some time ago, mainly because of the com- Commission to demonstrate that there is a viable busi-
plexity of defining the technical, commercial and legal ness case for the EETS.
framework necessary to make the EETS definition ‘com-
plete’. The challenges that were posed were recognised Knock-on effect
by the Stockholm Group - a collection of Member States The reality is that without this, any Decision under the
that in general had limited experience of, but nonethe- Directive could have huge consequences for Scheme
less an interest in, wide area tolling systems. This align- Owners (Toll Chargers) and the potential market for
ment has sought to work both as part of the CESARE Service Providers (EETS Providers) and pressure should
Projects and in its own right to support the Commission be brought to bear by Member States to argue the case
in the development of a Decision draft that could ulti- for this now. Indeed there is a requirement in the Direc-
mately be supported in a Comité Télépéage vote. tive for the Commission to deliver a cost benefit analysis
Shortly after the adoption of the Directive, PA Consult- before the end of 2009 (Article 2 (3)).
ing Group issued a paper that set out 16 topic areas that Such a study needs to demonstrate at least the follow-
it considered needed to be addressed before such a ing four things:
Decision could be made. [The paper can be found at: 1) That there is real, genuine and widespread
https://www.paconsulting.com/publications/pb_open demand from hauliers for an interoperable service
/pb_toll_service.htm] 2) That there is an attractive profitable business for
These were grouped under three headings; examples companies that are interested in becoming EETS Pro-
of which are outlined below: viders
Develop a single contract 3) That costs of the changes to existing systems to
• Align and gain the commitment of all accommodate EETS can be afforded and implemented

62 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com



 




 


 !"# 
$+"$%$ $ "$%  $& #%$%#$"
"$'
(#  #")
!+."#"& #%$, #"* +
 


   


,

"%$- $+"%

.$"""$ $ $+"- #" +,
$++ !$ +$
* $"& #%$$+ /$.(
"%"/ ! / $ /++ $%
+  /"+ +$* "$%$ %. $!/,

%- "0 $. $$* $

$/*/, *+*/#+%#//
$/ $ !"# * +- " /+-
$+"$%%$  $& #%$
+ .$+#  //$ &
"& "%$ %#+!"$#"(
 $1
%"0- "* "//$" 
 .$/ 2 $- 
3"* //$"* +
+ $%- $+/"$ //
// $##/  $,

/- *"##+ //# $

 ./*/%""# !/,
'#" $+- %"0(**$ /
/# / "'"%/
% / " %%$  $%
="%" $"% $!%4  / 2+ $
, %$+"$+"
$+"%#// $$$ * $+ $+$+ .$ $/$"$+ 
%%$  $$"0/ $*  6 "#"),
,%$,$
"$%4
$5%$,$
"//6 789(:;<(988"

//="6 >(???(<:?(;@7:

 
 
9"#"" *A$!"- 
8<?>8A

B    3  
  C      3
  
Comment

in a cost effective and timely manner by Toll chargers ment of the superset of Scheme Rules that would pro-
4) That the money go round can be resolved in a vide the basis upon which an EETS universal OBU could
context where EETS Users are not required to pay any be formulated by ‘industry’.
premium charges to Toll Chargers.
Let’s look briefly at each in turn. Demonstration that the money go round can
be resolved
Demonstrate that there is real, genuine, Perhaps one of the biggest challenges underpinning
widespread demand the implementation of the Directive through the agree-
Nowhere to date has there been any systematic consid- ment of a Decision is that it is very unclear what com-
eration of the extent to which the European road haul- mercial model will underpin its operation. There is an
age and coach industry operators want a fully obligation on Toll Chargers not to discriminate against
interoperable service for road pricing. The absence of EETS Users by price - EETS Users must not be charged
any cost benefit study, indicating who will be picking up any more than other users. Recent discussions in Europe
the costs of the provision and installation of an interop- have also suggested that the Commission does not
erable EETS On-Board Unit (OBU) and a clear indication expect EETS Users to be charged for accessing the EETS
of how the EETS service from EETS Providers will be Services although subscription charges may be permit-
paid for their provision and operation does not help this ted. This leaves any would-be EETS Provider in the situ-
situation. ation that it must administer its operations without any
clear additional revenue stream to offset the sourcing
Demonstrate that there is attractive profit- and provision of EETS OBUs, even if the (unknown) costs
able business for EETS Providers for the device and installation are paid for by the sub-
The Directive makes no provisions for how EETS Provid- scribers to the service.
ers can be brought into being (apart from Toll Chargers In addition, the Commission appears to be taking the
who also issue OBUs and maintain accounts). The EETS position where EETS Providers receive their revenues
Provider services are generally considered to be some from Toll Chargers in respect of issuing OBUs and col-
form of market offering and hence cannot be created lecting revenue on their behalf. However, this appears
explicitly by Member States except perhaps as some to raise further issues in terms of the contractual rela-
form of State-run operation to which EETS users would tionships as CESARE recommendations suggest that
have to subscribe, whether within the State or from EETS Providers should guarantee Users’ payments.
another country. Consequently, it then becomes unclear who is the cus-
As soon as EETS comes into force, there is an implica- tomer in the EETS Provider/Toll Charger relationship
tion that Toll Chargers that continue to offer OBUs to with corresponding uncertainty about the VAT implica-
‘local users’ will become responsible for undertaking tions of this. One possible option around offsetting EETS
EETS account management, including sourcing and Provider costs is that the EETS Provider might be able to
supplying EETS OBUs for an uncertain demand. Alter- provide additional,Value Added Services (VAS) to EETS
natively they could co-opt EETS Providers from whom Users as a means of separate revenue generation. How-
such services could be sourced if any come into being. ever, characteristically VAS in the transport domain has
to date not been a big money spinner for providers. In
Demonstration that the costs can be afforded addition, the Commission has also sought to enable
and changes implemented in a timely competition in the supply of such VAS on OBUs as was
manner the case with the Toll Collect OBU employed in the Ger-
There are legal obligations upon Member States to man Lorry Charging Scheme which would detract from
ensure that the technical provision of the EETS (what- this incentive to would be EETS Providers.
ever these turn out to be - when specified) are imple-
mented within the electronic charging schemes that Conclusions
operate within their boundaries. However, without a We have seen that there is pressure being brought to
clear definition of the EETS in technical, commercial bear by the Commission to move the EETS Directive for-
and legal terms, the costs of changes to existing systems ward to a Decision over the coming months - this appears
to accommodate the additional capabilities necessary to be a matter of process instead of true progress. How-
to support EETS operations cannot be understood or ever, many of the issues that are needed to support the
quantified. Consequently the time and resources EETS unambiguous definition have yet to be definitively
required to implement the changes in a manner that addressed (including many of the points listed in the
does not hamper existing operations also cannot be Directive’s own Annex) potentially causing ambiguity in
assessed. implementation within what are likely to be very
Although projects like RCI have made strides toward demanding implementation timescales.
the consideration of an interoperable OBU, it is not clear Consequently, Member States, and more importantly
that the OBU costs have been a key consideration or that the road charging community in Europe, need to wake
the functionality required would encompass all the up to this situation and ensure that authorities are alerted
potential scheme designs that could be required by to the potential for perverse outcomes if such a Decision
Member States under the principles of subsidiarity. At is made prematurely. E
the very least there is a need for a European-wide agree- duncan.matheson@paconsulting.com

62 VVol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

www.q-free.com
 Advertisers’ Index

Aselsan..............................................................64
Austria Tech .....................................................45
Comnet ............................................................61
GMV ..................................................................25
ITS World Congress 2009.. inside back cover
Kapsch TrafficCom ..03 & outside back cover
Magnetic Autocontrol ....................................09
OSI Laserscan...................... inside front cover
PBS&J.................................................................15
Q-Free ..............................................................63
Robot Visual Systems .....................................29
Samaritania.......................................................59
Satellic Traffic Management...........................41
Skymeter ..........................................................49
South African Society for ITS .......................59
TranspoQuip 2009 .........................................35
Transurban .......................................................17
Vitronic .............................................................07

Thinking Highways
and ETC, etc
For more information
on the advertisers in
this issue please go to
thinkinghighways.com
and click on
READER ENQUIRIES

64 Vol 3 No 4 ETCetc www.thinkinghighways.com

Kapsch TrafficCom products, systems and services for road user charging are in use 24/7
around the globe. On highways, in urban and interurban environments. Using DSRC, GPS/
GNSS, GSM/GPRS and/or ANPR / ALPR technologies. Whatever your application demands.
Over 200 references in 30 countries. Kapsch TrafficCom | www.kapsch.net