Charging, Tolling & RUC

Colin Sowman picks some highlights from a one- day ASECAP Conference about the EU's new regulations on Concessions. ASECAP, the association of European tolling companies, has outlined the scale of the challenge facing authorities and tolling companies in complying with the European Union’s Directives 2014/23/EU and 2014/24/EU in a new report and at a special conference in Brussels.

For the first time, the Australian ITS Summit and the National electronic Tolling Conference (NeTC), which takes place on 12-14 May in Melbourne, will combine as the most important gathering in Australia for ITS professionals in 2015. To be opened by Minister Luke Donnellan, Minister for Roads and Road Safety and Minister for Ports, the conference will bring together transportation engineers, manufacturers, consultants, business leaders, academia and government to hear about best practices, trends and em

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is to supply equipment for an electronic toll collection (ETC) system to be used on an expressway in Vietnam, including 50,000 on-board units for automobiles and antennas for use at toll gates. The ETC system will be introduced on the 55-kilometre Ho Chi Minh City to Dau Giay section of the route from Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho in the Mekong Delta. The system uses active-type dedicated short-range communication (active DSRC), the standard ETC system specification i

ITS International talks to Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the transport research and lobbying organisation, the RAC Foundation. It is through the eyes of an economist that Professor Stephen Glaister, emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and director of the RAC Foundation, views current and future transport problems. Having spent 30 years at the London School of Economics and another 10 at Imperial, the move to the RAC Foundation was a radical departure from

The US toll road industry is gathering in Portland this week to discuss road usage charging (RUC), the mechanism that allows drivers to pay by the mile for their use of roads. Opening the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association’s (IBTTA) Transportation Financing and Road Usage Charging Conference, Patrick Jones, executive director, said a ‘sea change in thinking’ was needed to help find stable sources of funding for surface transportation. Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer told conferen

Oregon’s new pay-by-the-mile road usage charge program, OReGO, took a step forward Monday, as state officials announced that three private business partners are now technically certified to manage accounts and collect road user fees from those accounts for deposit into the State Highway Fund. “Oregon is pioneering the nation’s first pay-by-the-mile road usage charge system. We now have three trusted private partners on board — Azuga, Sanef and Verizon Telematics — that Oregonians can choose from when the

D’Artagnan Consulting has been awarded a four-year contract by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) as the State of California seeks to implement one of the nation’s most ambitious per-mile road charging study and pilot efforts to date. D’Artagnan is providing direct support to Caltrans to achieve the objectives of 2014 legislation which directed a study to implement, evaluate, and report back to lawmakers on a pilot test of road charging methods before the end of June 2018. In the

The New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) is to install video enforcement cameras on all toll lanes on the NH turnpike system in a bid to deter non-payment of tolls. Enforcement cameras have previously existed in all the dedicated E-Z Pass lanes and open road tolling (ORT) lanes. As part of the last phase of the new lane system installation project, enforcement cameras will be installed in all remaining toll lanes. The change is set to be implemented around the end of April and will be compl

Multi-lane free-flow toll systems lower the operational risk of highway concessions, according to toll road operator Renovias Concessionária, which implemented the first such system in Brazil. "Operational risk is lower than manned toll booths as no workers are needed," Renovias maintenance manager Michell Costa told BNamericas. The system in place on São Paulo state highway SP340 detects the electronic fee collection tags in vehicles using both 5.8GHz and 915MHz frequencies, and captures front and re

Egis has been awarded an operation and maintenance services contract for the National Highway 8D (NH-8D)in India, a 124 kilometres toll motorway connecting Jetpur (Rjkot district) and Somnath (Gir Somnath district) on the West coast of the Indian federal state of Gujarat. The motorway has two toll plazas with ten lanes each. The contract, awarded by concession company Jetpur Somnath Tollways Private Limited (JSTPL) lasts for three years (two years with one year automatic extension) and includes toll, ro