Electronic toll collection
Electronic toll collection is a wireless system to automatically collect the usage fee or toll charged to vehicles using toll roads, HOV lanes, toll bridges, and toll tunnels. It is a faster alternative which is replacing toll houses, where vehicles must stop and the driver manually pays the toll with cash or a card. In most cases, vehicles using the system are equipped with an automated radio transponder device. When the vehicle passes a roadside toll reader device, a radio signal from the reader triggers the transponder, which transmits back an identifying number which registers the vehicle's use of the road, and an electronic payment system charges the user the toll.
A major advantage is the driver does not have to stop, reducing traffic delays. Electronic tolling is cheaper than a staffed toll booth, reducing transaction costs for government or private road owners. The ease of varying the amount of the toll makes it easy to implement road congestion pricing, including for high-occupancy lanes, toll lanes that bypass congestion, and city-wide congestion charges. The payment system usually requires users to sign up in advance and load money into a declining-balance account, which is debited each time they pass a toll point.
Electronic toll lanes may operate alongside conventional toll booths so that drivers who do not have transponders can pay at the booth. Open road tolling is an increasingly popular alternative which eliminates toll booths altogether; electronic license plate readers mounted beside or over the road read the transponders as vehicles pass at highway speeds, eliminating traffic bottlenecks created by vehicles slowing down to go through a toll booth lane. Vehicles without transponders are either excluded or pay by plate – a license plate reader takes a picture of the license plate to identify the vehicle, and a bill may be mailed to the address where the car's license plate number is registered, or drivers may have a certain amount of time to pay online or by phone.
Singapore was the first city in the world to implement an electronic road toll collection system known as the Singapore Area Licensing Scheme for purposes of congestion pricing, in 1974. Since 2005, nationwide GNSS road pricing systems have been deployed in several European countries. With satellite-based tolling solutions, it is not necessary to install electronic readers beside or above the road in order to read transponders since all vehicles are equipped with On Board Units having Global Navigation Satellite System receivers in order to determine the distance traveled on the tolled road network - without the use of any roadside infrastructure.
American Nobel Economics Prize winner William Vickrey was the first to propose a system of electronic tolling for the Washington Metropolitan Area in 1959. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the first prototype systems were tested. Norway has been a world pioneer in the widespread implementation of this technology, beginning in 1986. Italy was the first country to deploy a full electronic toll collection system in motorways at national scale in 1989.
History
In 1959, Nobel Economics Prize winner William Vickrey was the first to propose a similar system of electronic tolling for the Washington Metropolitan Area. He proposed that each car would be equipped with a transponder: "The transponder's personalized signal would be picked up when the car passed through an intersection, and then relayed to a central computer which would calculate the charge according to the intersection and the time of day and add it to the car's bill." In the 1960s and the 1970s, free flow tolling was tested with fixed transponders at the undersides of the vehicles and readers, which were located under the surface of the highway. Plans were however scrapped and it never came into actual implementation. Modern toll transponders are typically mounted under the windshield, with readers located in overhead gantries.After tests in 1974, in 1975, Singapore became the first country in the world to implement an electronic road toll collection system known as the Singapore Area Licensing Scheme for purposes of congestion pricing on its more urbanized roads. It was refined in 1998 as Electronic Road Pricing.
Italy deployed a full ETC in motorways at national scale in 1989. Telepass, the brand name of the ETC belonging to Autostrade S.p.A. now Autostrade per l'Italia, was designed by Dr. Eng Pierluigi Ceseri and Dr. Eng. Mario Alvisi and included a full operational real time Classification of Vehicles and Enforcement via cameras interconnected with the PRA via a network of more than 3.000 Km. optical fibers. Telepass introduced the concept of ETC Interoperability because interconnected 24 different Italian motorway operators allowing users to travel between different concession areas and paying only at the end of the journey. Dr. Eng. Mario Alvisi is considered the father of ETC in motorways because not only co-designed Telepass but was able to make it the first standardized operating ETC system in the world as European standard in 1996. He acted as a consultant for deployment of ETC in many countries including Japan, United States, Brazil. In Japan, only the ETC System was constructed in all of the controlled-access expressways in 2001. By 2019, 92% of drivers in Japan are using ETC.
ETC was first introduced in Bergen, Norway, in 1986, operating together with traditional tollbooths. In 1991, Trondheim introduced the world's first use of completely unaided full-speed electronic tolling. Norway now has 25 toll roads operating with electronic fee collection, as the Norwegian technology is called. In 1995, Portugal became the first country to apply a single, universal system to all tolls in the country, the Via Verde, which can also be used in parking lots and gas stations. The United States is another country with widespread use of ETC in several states, though many U.S. toll roads maintain the option of manual collection.
As of March 2018, in Japan, a total of approximately 2.61 million vehicles are equipped with devices compliant with the ETC 2.0.
Overview
In some urban settings, automated gates are in use in electronic-toll lanes, with 5 mph legal limits on speed; in other settings, 20 mph legal limits are not uncommon. However, in other areas such as the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, and at various locations in California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Texas, cars can travel through electronic lanes at full speed. Illinois' Open Road Tolling program features 274 contiguous miles of barrier-free roadways, where I-PASS or E-ZPass users continue to travel at highway speeds through toll plazas, while cash payers pull off the main roadway to pay at tollbooths. Currently over 80% of Illinois' 1.4 million daily drivers use an I-PASS.Enforcement is accomplished by a combination of a camera which takes a picture of the car and a radio frequency keyed computer which searches for a drivers window/bumper mounted transponder to verify and collect payment. The system sends a notice and fine to cars that pass through without having an active account or paying a toll.
Factors hindering full-speed electronic collection include:
- significant non-participation, entailing lines in manual lanes and disorderly traffic patterns as the electronic- and manual- collection cars "sort themselves out" into their respective lanes;
- problems with pursuing toll evaders;
- need, in at least some current systems, to confine vehicles in lanes, while interacting with the collection devices, and the dangers of high-speed collisions with the confinement structures;
- vehicle hazards to toll employees present in some electronic-collection areas;
- the fact that in some areas at some times, long lines form even to pass through the electronic-collection lanes;
- costs and other issues raised when retrofitting existing toll collection facilities;
- unionized toll collectors can also be problematic.
Despite these limitations, if delay at the toll gate is reduced, the tollbooth can serve more vehicles per hour. The greater the throughput of any toll lane, the fewer lanes required, so construction costs can be reduced. Specifically, the toll-collecting authorities have incentives to resist pressure to limit the fraction of electronic lanes in order to limit the length of manual-lane lines. In the short term, the greater the fraction of automated lanes, the lower the cost of operation. In the long term, the greater the relative advantage that registering and turning one's vehicle into an electronic-toll one provides, the faster cars will be converted from manual-toll use to electronic-toll use, and therefore the fewer manual-toll cars will drag down average speed and thus capacity.
In some countries, some toll agencies that use similar technology have set up reciprocity arrangements, which permit one to drive a vehicle on another operator's tolled road with the tolls incurred charged to the driver's toll-payment account with their home operator. An example is the United States E-ZPass tag, which is accepted on toll roads, bridges and tunnels in fifteen states from Illinois to Maine.
File:SevernTAG.JPG|thumb|TAG lane on the Second Severn Crossing, Wales
In Australia, there are a number or organizations that provide tags known as e-TAG that can be used on toll roads. They include Transport for NSW's E-Toll and Transurban's Linkt. A toll is debited to the customer's account with their tag provider. Some toll road operators – including Sydney's Sydney Harbour Tunnel, Lane Cove Tunnel and Westlink M7, Melbourne's CityLink and Eastlink, and Brisbane's Gateway Motorway – encourage use of such tags, and apply an additional vehicle matching fee to vehicles without a tag.
A similar device in France, called Liber-T for light vehicles and TIS-PL for HGVs, is accepted on all toll roads in the country.
In Brazil, the Sem Parar/Via-Fácil system allows customers to pass through tolls in more than 1,000 lanes in the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. Sem Parar/Via-Fácil also allows users to enter and exit more than 100 parking lots. There are also other systems, such as via expressa, onda livre, and auto expresso, that are present in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Parana, and Minas Gerais.
Since 2016, National Highway Authority of Pakistan implemented electronic toll collection on its motorway network using a RFID-based tag called the "M-TAG". The tag is attached to the windscreen of vehicles and is automatically scanned at toll plazas on entry and exit, meanwhile debiting the calculated toll tax from a prepaid M-TAG account.
The European Union issued the EFC-directive, which attempts to standardize European toll collection systems. Systems deployed after January 1, 2007 must support at least one of the following technologies: satellite positioning, mobile communications using the GSM-GPRS standard or 5.8 GHz microwave technology. Furthermore, the European Commission issued the Regulation on the European Electronic Toll Service which must be implemented by all Member States from 19 October 2021. All toll roads in Ireland must support the eToll tag standard.
From 2015, the Norwegian government requires commercial trucks above 3.5 tons on its roads to have a transponder and a valid road toll subscription. Before this regulation, two-thirds of foreign trucks failed to pay road tolls.