Charging, Tolling & RUC

Kapsch TraffiCom Australia is to install a new open road tolling system on Sydney’s M5 south west motorway. The contract, worth over US$10.5 million has been awarded by Australia’s Interlink Roads, who, in partnership with the New South Wales Government, have developed a programme of enhancements to the motorway to provide three lanes in each direction between Camden Valley Way and King Georges Road.

Econolite has announced that Lee County, Florida, has harnessed the travel time module of its Centracs advanced transportation management system (ATMS) for the deployment of its BlueToad (Bluetooth Travel-time Origination and Destination) system to actively monitor travel times and road speeds. The ATMS was installed in 2011, as part of Lee County’s signal re-timing project for which the county’s DoT received an ‘A’ grade in the 2012 National Transportation Operations Coalition (NTOC) National Traffic Signa

OmniAir Certification Services (OCS) has accredited MET Laboratories as the first test lab in the 6C-for-Tolling Certification Programme. This scheme is designed to ensure tolling tag and reader interoperability (IOP) across equipment vendors and toll facilities that choose to deploy equipment certified as compliant to the 6C Requirements Document as defined by the 6C Toll Operators Committee. It is based on the ISO/IEC 18000-6 (Type C) RFID protocol.

France-headquartered tolling system specialist CS has announced that it has received a binding offer from Sanef Group to acquire its ITS business unit. The deal would allow CS ITS, which employs some 220 people and registered € 31.4 million (US$38.96 million) revenues in 2011, to take full advantage of a growing tolling system market. The company says it will initiate consultation with its workers council representatives with a view to finalising the acquisition.

Q-Free has been awarded a new frame agreement for delivery of tolling tags from Centro Gestao Meios de Pagto (CGMP), Brazil's Centro tag distributor, valued at US$12, with a guaranteed volume of just over $4 million.

Efforts to advance national interoperability for tolling systems are gaining momentum, with one protocol promoted by a key operator group emerging as a candidate to form the basis for full AVI interoperability, Tim McGuckin writes. Fuelled by a growing awareness and acceptance of standards-based solutions, the US toll community is quickening towards the goal of interoperability between toll systems across the US. Over 20 years since the advent of electronic toll collection (ETC), key elements are falling in

TÜV Rheinland’s ITS group has been selected to provide user acceptance testing (UAT) support for the 495 Express Lanes, the new high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes opening on the Virginia side of the I-495/Capital Beltway at the end of this year. The project is one of the largest transportation endeavours in the US, aiming to ease traffic on one of the country’s most congested corridors and UAT is a key testing component of the project that will involve testing all aspects of the Express Lanes tolling hardware

Kapsch TrafficCom has received a first order for the delivery of on-board units (OBUs) from Brazil. The order has come from SINIAV (Sistema Nacional de Identificação Automática de Veículos) which is an agency of the Ministry of the Cities (MC) and the National Traffic Committee (CONTRAN) in Brazil which foresees the mandatory electronic registration for all vehicles in the country, including passenger cars, trucks and motorbikes.

3M’s decision to acquire the business of Federal Signal Technologies Group (FSTech) from Federal Signal Corporation for a purchase price of US$110 million in cash provides an insight into the company’s view of the tolling industry’s future health. 3M says the fast-growing US$3 billion electronic tolling industry is projected to grow at a rate greater than 12 per cent per year as government agencies increasingly rely on tolling to fund roadway infrastructure, construction and maintenance. The company says FS

Brazil's government has given private engineering company Estruturadora Brasileira de Projetos (EBP) 150 days to prepare technical studies for seven road stretches which are earmarked for privatisation. The concession auctions will involve 5,700km of state roads, the largest being a 1,423km stretch linking three motorways in Mato Grosso do Sul (BR 163, BR 267 and BR 262) to the Mato Grosso/Sao Paulo border.