Charging, Tolling & RUC

Following violent protests from HGV drivers in France, the country's planned introduction of their distance-based eco-tax scheme has now been suspended. French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici has announced plans to renegotiate the contract concluded with Italian-led consortium Ecomouv, charged with implementing the country's controversial heavy goods vehicle (HGV) eco-tax, to minimise the cost of the levy for taxpayers in France. He emphasised that although the HGV tax has indeed been suspended in the

A consortium of Kapsch TrafficCom Russia, Kapsch TrafficCom and Russian company JSC (NIS) have successfully pre-qualified and are now set to work on the next stage of the tender for the development of Russia’s nationwide tolling system for heavy vehicles. The system, based on the use of the GLONASS/GPS satellite signal, will target vehicles with a maximum authorised weight of more than 12 tonnes. The project duration is thirteen years. The consortium unites Kapsch and NIS in a joint venture that has a

A joint venture between Egis Projects and Sanef is paving the way for a new Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and transponder-based ‘hub’ for nationwide tolling interoperability in the US. The joint venture, called Secure Interagency Flow LLC, has an agreement with the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) and operations are due to start by the end of this year. The final contract signings took place at the recent IBTTA conference in Vancouver and within the joint venture Egis will focus on opera

A special report, US Managed Lanes, by Fitch Ratings sees toll express or managed lanes (MLs) as especially difficult to assess for financial viability, saying that they vary enormously one to another and are likely to demonstrate very different performance and be subject to greater volatility than regular toll roads. But they say there is now sufficient experience with managed lanes (MLs) for some lessons to be learned. ML time savings compared to the regular lanes has been seen as the fundamental drive

Seattle-based traffic data company Inrix is working on a feature that will provide toll road users with detailed real-time data on traffic speeds, travel times and incidents by dedicated lanes versus general purpose lanes. This data will allow constantly updated reports on relative speeds in general lanes versus express lanes and other parallel roads and will allow for more accurate routing. Drivers should be able to start getting data which will enable them to know what their time savings will be on to

Austria has joined the Easygo+ toll cooperation started in 2007 by Denmark, Norway and Sweden. EasyGo+ enables drivers of heavy goods vehicles above 3.5 tons travelling through the four countries to use only on board unit (OBU), which guarantees compliance with European legislation on the European Electronic Toll Service (EETS). It also allows for differing national rules and regulations and different tolling systems in each country.

profitability in the third quarter. Revenue increased 10 per cent to US$28.6 million, with operating profit of US$8.4 million and a profit before tax of US$1.2 million. This compares to a negative operating result of US$3.9 million and a loss before tax of US$3.7 million in the third quarter 2012. Q-Free has also strengthened its efforts in advanced transportation management systems (ATMS) through an investment in the American traffic management company Intelight in Tucson, Arizona, and acquisition of th

Kapsch TrafficCom North America (Kapsch) is to maintain the toll collection software for the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The two-year contract, awarded by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, covers all toll lane software. The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District operates the Golden Gate Bridge and two public transit systems: Golden Gate Transit buses and Golden Gate Ferry. Last year, 38 million vehicles crossed the bridge and over 9 million cust

Q-Free is to acquire Serbian traffic management company Elcom in a deal worth US$1.8 million. Q-Free has signed a share purchase agreement (SPA) for the acquisition which it says reflects the company’s efforts to strengthen its business area within advanced transportation management systems (ATMS) and follows a US$1 million investment in ten percent ownership of US traffic management company Intelight. Established in 1994, Elcom offers traffic controllers, LED street lights and traffic control system sol

According to a new RFID sector survey by IDTechEx Research, RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2014-2024, the RFID market will increase from US$6.98 billion in 2012 to US$7.88 billion, and will reach US$23.4 billion in 2020. This includes tags, readers and software/services for RFID cards, labels, fobs and all other form factors - for both passive and active RFID. Using new, unique information researched globally by IDTechEx technical experts, the new report RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2