Charging, Tolling & RUC

sanef ITS Technologies America continues to build on its success in North America with two major orders - from the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission (NFBC) and Blue Water Bridge Canada (BWBC). As the operator of the Alliance for Tolling Interoperability (ATI) hub clearing-house, sanef has expertise in interoperability initiatives, and is to supply its FastToll Interop for E-ZPass interface software to NFBC, which will enable the authority to process transactions from customers using E-ZPass transponders.

Within a broader review of US transport infrastructure securities, including ports and airlines, Fitch Rating analysts say the recent slow growth in aggregate traffic is likely to continue but that many established toll roads look financially solid because of their pricing power - tolls that have been well below revenue maximising levels. Their pricing power has been somewhat reduced, Fitch says, by strong increases in toll rates on many toll roads, which mean they have less scope for big increases in to

Austrian-based traffic technology group Swarco has appointed Cees de Wijs as its new Chief Executive Officer. De Wijs, who has almost 20 years of experience in traffic and transport telematics across all transport modes, will take up his new position on 1 January. De Wijs, aged 45, is a Dutch national and holds a PhD degree in engineering from Delft University of Technology. He previously worked for Royal KPN Group and Logica where he was transport and logistics group director, responsible for the comp

Beginning in the first of quarter 2014, Kapsch TrafficCom is to supply on-board units (OBUs) for Norway’s electronic toll collection system, AutoPass. The Norwegian Public Road Administration, which is responsible for the Norwegian public road network, is currently adapting the standards for on-board units to the European norm EN15509 and will replace the native AutoPass OBUs that are currently in use. Along with Norbit, Kapsch is one of two companies that successfully demonstrated its experience and te

Examination of Norway’s tolling companies finds much to praise, and some criticisms too, as Torill Eidsheim told delegates at the ASECAP conference. The cost of collecting tolls has a substantial effect on the profitability, or otherwise, of tolling companies and is within the company’s control to a far greater degree than, for instance, traffic volumes. And while it is easy to assume that all tolling companies incur similar collection costs, that is not always the case according to Torill Eidsheim, pres

Having re-entered the ITS market, 3M is busy shaping the future technology for vehicle detection, tolling and parking, as Colin Sowman discovers. Having sold off its Opticom business in 2007, 3M effectively re-entered the ITS market last year paying $110 million for Federal Signal Technology Group (FSTech) – but why?

Being the first organisation attempting to implement an interoperable system poses challenges and increases risk that must be managed to realise the benefits. The European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) legislation aims to avoid the problems experienced in the USA and provide road users with seamless travel across the EU but it can pose big problems for some toll operators. Take, for instance, the case of the Humber Bridge in the UK. Its case was highlighted at the recent ITS World Congress by Tim Gammons,

This month saw the start of e-tolling on the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) in South Africa, one of the largest electronic toll collection systems for open road tolling in the world, following an announcement by the country’s Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters, in November. Kapsch TrafficCom reports that the number of active accounts has been consistently rising following the commencement of the e-toll project in Gauteng, on 3 December. Kapsch anticipates that this trend will continue. Kapsc

Moody’s Investor Services have up-rated the outlook for US toll roads from negative to stable. They think traffic should grow 1.5 per cent on a median basis in 2014, which they describe as a “sustainable comeback” from the three per cent decline since 2009. They think toll revenues should grow to a “mid-single digit percentage range” in 2013 and 2014 which we guess means 4 per cent to 6 per cent. They note such an increase in toll revenues is a slowdown from 2012 when big toll rate increases boosted r

Following a nine-month field test, Denver, Colorado-based E-470 highway authority is to use Confidex’s 18000-6C UHF RFID windshield tags in their all-electronic ExpressToll toll collection system. E-470 processes on average 3.5 million ExpressToll transactions monthly, requiring a high level of reliability for the non-stop, electronic tolling system at highway speeds. The OmniAir-certified18000-6C UHF tag is a reliable and tamper evident solution that is attached to the car windshield to automatically id