Charging, Tolling & RUC

The German government has introduced a controversial road toll which will force foreign car drivers to pay up to €130 (US$162) a year for using Germany's autobahn motorways.

Motorists in India will soon be able to travel the length of a national highway without making a single toll stop with the government’s centralised and interoperable electronic toll collection (ETC) system which is set to begin operations by March 2015, according to a report in the India Times.

More than five years later than the industry had expected, market research and events firm IDTechEx find that the passive RFID tag market is now seeing tremendous volume growth. Market research and events firm IDTechEx find that the passive RFID tag market is now seeing tremendous volume growth - more than five years later than the industry had expected. Most of the growth is based on retailer adoption of UHF RFID for shelf-level stock replenishment, with the latest example being fashion retailer Zara r

Auckland, New Zealand, faces a US$9.5 billion transport funding gap to build the fully-integrated transport network set out in the 30-year Auckland Plan that includes new roads, rail, ferries, busways, cycle-ways and supporting infrastructure needed to cope with a population set to hit 2.5 million in the next three decades. If Auckland opts to pay for the fully-integrated Auckland Plan, Auckland Council officials claim the transport network congestion is expected to improve by 20 per cent over the next 1

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration has awarded an order worth around US$4.8 million to Q-Free has for a six-month extension of the contract for operation of the country’s central toll collection system. The current contract expires in June 2015. Q-free CEO Thomas Falck comments: “We are happy to receive this extension order for the operation of the central system with the Norwegian Public Road Administration (NPRA). Q-Free continues to serve the NPRA and we are taking several steps to strengthen o

The Kentucky-Indiana Joint Board for the Ohio River Bridges Project has voted to restart the procurement of a tolling services provider. The vote comes after the Indiana Finance Authority’s review of a protest submitted by a non-winning bidder in late September. The Joint Board heard from the IFA that the allegations made in the protest were unsubstantiated, but the agency did uncover a significant potential personal and organisational conflict of interest regarding financial arrangements between a subc

Iteris, partnering with HERE, a Nokia company, is to implement performance monitoring using its flagship traffic analytics and performance measurement system, iPeMS, with HERE mapping and traffic data, to provide the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) with advanced traffic analytics across its tolled network.

Tolling agencies from six US states have committed to start using the Alliance for Toll Interoperability’s (ATI’s) hub service. These include the Central Texas Mobility Authority, the Northwest Parkway in Colorado as well as members of the California Toll Operators Committee and agencies in three other – currently unnamed states. ATI members capturing details of vehicles using their toll roads that are not registered on their own system can send details to the hub. The alliance holds registration plate a

Civil engineering firm Britcon has completed works for a new US$8.8 million state-of-the-art toll collection facility on the Humber Bridge to replace the toll collection system which was installed in 1981. The new collection system will include one of the first open road tolling arrangement to be installed in the UK, where vehicles do not need to stop while driving through the toll plaza. Britcon undertook full infrastructure works for the project on behalf of Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctrica

According to a report by Reuters, some of the world's largest pension funds and infrastructure investors are forming consortia to bid for the operator of an Indiana toll road that filed for bankruptcy last month. Indiana agreed in 2006 to lease the 253 kilometre highway, billed as the Main Street of the Midwest, for 75 years in return for US$3.8 billion. It stretches across the northernmost part of Indiana from Ohio to Illinois, linking Chicago with the largest cities on the eastern seaboard. While f