Charging, Tolling & RUC

The Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) is to continue its contract with Q-Free for the service and maintenance of the congestion charging infrastructure in Stockholm. The three-year contract is valued at approximately US$6 million and commences in November 2013. Congestion charges were introduced in Stockholm in 2006, first as a trial followed by a referendum, then permanently from 2007. A 2011 report published by Elsevier in mid-2011 concludes that during the first five years of operation the

A Bill that will provide the legislative mandate and funding to start to build and implement the first Road Usage Charging Legislation in the USA has been passed by the Oregon State Legislation. The Bill now goes to the Governor who will sign the bill into law. It is now expected that Washington State and several other states will follow in Oregon's pioneering footsteps for reliable and sustainable funding to maintain, upkeep and expend its surface transportation assets.

A new Hong Kong-based RFID hardware provider has emerged to offer UHF RFID solutions for security, access control, electronic tolling and logistics applications. Star Systems International was formed by a group of former employees of Sirit and Federal Signal Technologies with more than forty years of experience in the automatic identification, intelligent transportation and RFID industries. Star Systems International has obtained international distribution rights for products from Star-RFID, a Thailand base

The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board has approved a US$44 million contract with Chicago-based technology services company Accenture to build a new customer service and toll violation processing system. Scheduled to be in place by 2015, the system will improve how transactions from the tollway's 1.4 million daily drivers are processed and help eliminate violation errors, said Shana Whitehead, the tollway's chief of business systems. The tollway's customer service and violation processing system ha

The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) congratulated Anthony Foxx after the US Senate voted to confirm him as the next Secretary of the US Department of Transportation. Patrick D Jones, executive director and CEO of the worldwide association representing toll facility owners and operators and the businesses that serve them, said: “IBTTA congratulates Secretary Foxx on his confirmation today as the next US Secretary of Transportation. Secretary Foxx’s leadership comes at a time whe

The UK’s underused M6 toll road could be opened free to drivers stuck in congested traffic on the M6, it has been revealed. Toll road operators Midland Expressway have reportedly offered to clear the path to help relieve traffic jams on the M6 if the Government releases it from its commitment to part-finance the M54 link road. The company, a subsidiary of Australian company Macquarie Atlas Roads, has debts of £1.03 billion, which mature in 2015, and as part of its 50-year concession agreement would have to

Drivers using the 495 Express Lanes high occupancy toll road in north Virginia will benefit from the announcement that the speed limit is to be increased 65 miles per hour. The speed increase follows extensive safety studies and will help drivers save even more time when travelling on the Capital Beltway. The speed limit on the mainline Beltway lanes will remain at 55 mph. The 495 Express Lanes operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Dynamic pricing based on real-time traffic conditions manages the de

French engineering and consulting group Egis has been selected by Turkish toll concessionaire Oyotol as its partner for the operation and maintenance of the Gebze-İzmir motorway in Turkey. The deal follows the award of the Eurasia tunnel in 2012. The Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) project is being carried out on behalf of the Turkish General Directorate of Highways and is said to be the largest BOT project in Turkey to date. It includes 420 km of motorway (2x3 lanes) between Gebze on the North shore of

Vinci Autoroutes in France, the largest toll operator in Europe, has chosen Q-Free’s OBU 610 universal toll tag in an order valued at US$5.5 million. With more than four thousand kilometres under their concession Vinci Autoroutes controls around half of France’s national network. The OBU 610 is Q-Free’s fourth generation transponder, small yet powerful enough to support all 5.8 GHz CEN DSRC protocols.

Kapsch TrafficCom North America is to supply the next generation technology of its TDMA V6 interior transponder to the Canadian Tolling Company International (Cantoll) for 407 ETR, the world's first all-electronic, barrier-free toll road, in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada.