Capital charges ahead of European rivals

10 January 2008
 
London has stolen a march on the rest of Europe in trials of cross-border road-user charging (RUC) interoperability, planned for February.

A special ‘add-on’, staged in December, has filled a key technical gap in the EC’s European Road Charging Interoperability (RCI) project.

This will test charging equipment compatibility on major sections of tolled motorway networks in six mainland European countries. All these are wholly or partly dependent on dedicated, short-range communications (DSRC – ‘tag-and-beacon’) technology.

Germany is currently the only country using satellite-based, on-board units (OBUs) in its distance-based Toll Collect lorry charging system. It uses DSRC as back-up for enforcement.

The six formal RCI trial sites would not, therefore, have been able to demonstrate interoperability between different satellite-based systems across national boundaries. In response, UK RUC specialist, Ian Catling Consultancy, set up a seventh, complementary test in London. This took advantage of two Transport for London cars to demonstrate how satellite-based OBUs, designed to work on German trucks driving along Toll Collect roads, could also operate in a hypothetical scheme in London.

TfL was using the vehicles in its own trials of satellite-based RUC technology for potential upgrades of its congestion-charging scheme – which made London a suitable location for the extra demonstration. TfL’s trials suggest that combinations of latest satellite receivers with up-to-date map matching could deliver levels of accuracy that would be publicly acceptable for distance-based RUC.

In the short term, TfL looks more likely to opt for a DSRC-based upgrade. Meanwhile, the results of the London RCI demonstration will be published later this year, alongside those from mainland European trials.

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