Charging, Tolling & RUC

Telensa’s Planet system will replace around 600 street lights in Hong Kong’s Yuen Long Town area, to help provide a low-cost platform for smart city applications. The company was chosen by the highways department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (HKSARG). Planet is an intelligent street lighting system that is said to pay for itself in reduced energy and maintenance costs as well as offering improved quality of service through automatic fault reporting. Engineering services group

Tolling specialist Q-Free is to provide cameras, sensors and services for vehicle and number plate recognition at various points on Norway’s borders from 2019. The two-year agreement with the Directorate of Norwegian Customs will also serve the Norwegian Public Roads Administration and Norwegian Police. Q-Free estimates the contract will be worth 40-60m NOK (€4.2-6.3m).

We pay for roads through our taxes: the poor pay proportionately more, and effectively subsidise the rich. It would be fairer to accept the ‘user pays’ principle, says Dr John Walker. Road pricing is already used worldwide to combat congestion and pollution, to compensate for falling revenues from fuel duty (‘gas tax’), to provide an alternative (and fairer) means of charging motorists than the 80-year old fuel tax and to improve the efficiency of and expand transport infrastructure. However, it could and s

Parsons will implement its tolling technology along a key toll road in California. It will work on the Orange County segment of the four-lane, 18-mile 91 Express Lanes to improve services along the corridor. The company was chosen by the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) to deliver technical and operational services, including specifications development for toll and ITS, tolling-related planning and construction activities.

Motorists travelling over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge are set to pay an extra 25 cents per trip from 1 July. According to a report by Marin Independent Journal: “The onslaught of toll increases at the Golden Gate Bridge is not likely to subside as span authorities face looming budget deficits.” The bridge board will need to decide if more toll hikes are needed in a discussion scheduled for this autumn.

Kapsch TrafficCom’s Customer Service System (CSS) will be used by the Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA) to process electronic toll and parking transactions. The modular product is also intended to provide an interoperability platform for future multi-modal service invoicing. The back-office solution will be deployed with the intention of allowing SRTA to offer drivers a seamless experience by processing transactions for all of its toll facilities as well as support partner facilities within

Kapsch TrafficCom will replace all of Maryland Transportation Authority’s (MDTA’s) roadside tolling equipment. For the upgrade, valued $67m (£47m), Kapsch will utilise radio-frequency identification (RFID) toll readers, automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and scanners in the mixed-mode lanes. The company will also install its stereoscopic vehicle detection and classification sensor (nVDC) in the all-electronic toll lanes.

Union Tank Eckstein (UTA) has launched a solution for European electronic toll services (EETS) with the intention of allowing transport companies and forwarding agents to travel with a single on-board unit with all fees charged to one invoice. Called UTA One, the platform initially supports the toll systems in Belgium, France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Portugal and Spain. Germany and other European countries will be added through an over-the-air update. This option is also said to feature the integration

Jérôme Bonnet has been appointed IT director at Union Tank Eckstein (UTA) as part of a strategy to advance digitalisation and position the company in the European market as an innovative mobility service provider. He will report to the chief executive officer (CEO) Volker Huber who has been sharing responsibility for IT and toll. These areas of the business will now be run as separate entities. Bonnet joins UTA from its parent company Edenred and has also been CEO of Cardtrend Systems in Malaysia since

Jérôme Bonnet has been appointed IT director at Union Tank Eckstein (UTA) as part of a strategy to advance digitalisation and position the company in the European market as an innovative mobility service provider. He will report to the chief executive officer (CEO) Volker Huber who has been sharing responsibility for IT and toll. These areas of the business will now be run as separate entities. Bonnet joins UTA from its parent company Edenred and has also been CEO of Cardtrend Systems in Malaysia since