ABI Research’s Dominique Bonte talks to Jason Barnes about trends in tolling and how a wider appreciation of technology options is sorely needed. Global Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) solution revenues will grow to $8.5bn by 2018, with ETC becoming a main source of funding for both Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Vehicle-to-X (V2X) cooperative infrastructures, according to a new report from ABI Research (Chart 1). But, says the report’s author, ABI Research vice president and practice director Dom
RSSABI Research’s Dominique Bonte talks to Jason Barnes about trends in tolling and how a wider appreciation of technology options is sorely needed.
Global Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) solution revenues will grow to $8.5bn by 2018, with ETC becoming a main source of funding for both Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Vehicle-to-X (V2X) cooperative infrastructures, according to a new report from5725 ABI Research (Chart 1). But, says the report’s author, ABI Research vice president and practice director Dominique Bonte, the inherent fragmentation of the tolling sector continues to hamper efforts towards greater interoperability and more widespread adoption – a situation which is compounded by a guarded attitude towards current- and next-generation Smart devices.
In fact, he says, far more notice needs to be taken by the tolling industry of technological developments in the automotive and consumer electronic fields.
Bonte sees two main technology ‘battles’ taking place within the tolling sector. In the short-range arena the battle is between Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and between short-range solutions including RFID/DSRC and wide-area solutions such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and cellular for applications with larger geographic scope. In terms of short range, RFID predominates in North America while in Europe it is DSRC while Asia has a mixed picture. For wide area solutions he sees RFID/DSRC losing out to GNSS/cellular in the longer term.
“Generally, there tends to be industry resistance wherever government gets involved in the regulatory effort. The fragmentary nature of the tolling sector – it’s typically point-based with a host of supporting technologies such as RFID, DSRC, GNSS and so on – doesn’t help,” he says.
“Some of the characteristics of the tolling sector are common to other sectors too, fleet management being an example. There, there are literally hundreds of proprietary solutions, an absence of standards and high costs because bespoke systems require high levels of IT integration.”
Indeed, he notes, many tolling system suppliers are realising that IT integration and running tolling schemes on behalf of road network owners are key business areas going forward. These will account for over half of all business and represent a significant step away from traditional revenue-earners such as the supply of onboard units (Chart 2).
“Road operators want a turnkey solution and many want to demise operations to a systems supplier. There’s the potential for system suppliers to earn lots of money but I’m not convinced that it’s a sustainable model. If we look at Machine-to-Machine [M2M] solutions for manufacturing and other sectors, that also provides an example of where there is common ground with tolling in the form of a lack of standards, high profits and a consequent lack of harmonisation.”
But that doesn’t mean that there is no room for change: “I’m a big believer in the future use of GNSS and in-vehicle systems for applications such as tolling because they’ll be intrinsic and already capturing data anyway,” he continues.
“If we look at the potential number of systems which a vehicle will have to carry just a few years from now – eCall, OEM embedded connectivity for infotainment, potentially some form of monitoring solution for pay-as-you-go insurance, as well as tolling and parking – it’s clear that bundling these together makes much better sense to the end user. Even eCall itself could serve as the platform for additional applications, despite being based on dated voice-over-data technology. The eCall technology’s not especially future-proof, especially because price point was a driver of choice, but it demonstrates that there are alternatives to what we have now.”
Bonte notes that DSRC is very similar to WiFi in many respects and he highlights the use of smartphones by cyclists and pedestrians for ‘Here I am’ safety applications as well as for navigation and making payments.
“The next big debate will be over whether we should be pursuing systems embedded in the vehicle or better smartphone integration. The Ford SYNC system provides a model for the latter. Further out, do we even need V2X to be DSRC-based? A new longer-range Bluetooth standard is already being looked at by some forward thinkers. Guaranteeing that the user always carries or switches on his or her phone is a challenge but ANPR provides a fall-back from an enforcement perspective.”
To some, this thinking might seem overly radical but Bonte thinks not: “Whatever we see being debated at conferences, the only constant I can see is the smartphone’s ever-greater encroachment into all areas of our lives. The typical smartphone has motion sensors, accelerometers and fairly good GPS. Despite current resistance, it has all the basics needed to carry out distance-based road user charging. Rather than continuing to resist, perhaps we should be looking at how we can use the smartphone for all different kinds of applications.”
“For example, in the very near future we won’t just be talking about GPS. Many chipset manufacturers now incorporate GLONASS functionality into their products and other systems such as the EU’s Galileo and those being developed by China and India will be coming online.
“Smart devices’ and future vehicles’ incorporation of motion sensors and WiFi together with mobile telephony’s improving in-cell ID capabilities and Assisted GPS allow us to achieve very good positioning in urban canyons and even indoors. Solutions are precise and reliable and can even be used for parallel lane-based charging where HOV and HOT lanes are in operation. Real-time connectivity via cellular is very good now, and still improving in locations where it’s been patchy. WiFi coverage is also extending beyond our cities and if we’re able to upload information in real-time we have all of the information we need for all sorts of applications including tolling.”
All of this leans towards a more holistic environment where many of the systems used to facilitate tolling could also be used to build better traffic management products.
“Google is already doing this,” Bonte continues. “Metadata drawing on all kinds of sources, be they weather monitoring, congestion and incident detection or many other kinds of systems, is combined to give traffic information which reaches beyond historic or real-time to become predictive.”
That should be pushing us to look at tolling not just as a revenue source but as a traffic management tool, he feels: “Dynamic pricing already exists in power grids, for instance, and the roads are a utility just like any other.
“Ultimately, however, travel is a derived need. Many of us no longer need to travel to work given the kinds of jobs that we do.
Our politicians are being very short-sighted in addressing the issues in the ways that they are. They should be concentrating on incentivising and removal of the resistance to the likes of teleworking, tele-education and telehealth. The pushback against these isn’t just in the transport or tolling sector, it’s embedded throughout society as a whole. But taken together, the internet and M2M are hugely disruptive and will continue to be so.”
ABI Research’s Electronic Toll Collection: A Key Business Driver for ITS and V2I study covers types of ETC (highway, urban and area tolling), ETC technologies (RFID, DSRC, video and GNSS/cellular), use cases and benefits. It also includes an in-depth review of the main implementations and the ETC ecosystem. ETC revenue forecast per region, type of Toll collection, and technology are included.
Defining variations by region
The US remains predominantly wedded to RFID technology and Europe to DSRC whilst the picture in Asia remains mixed. But defining precisely what is happening region by region is difficult because generalisations simply cannot be made, Bonte says.
“In Brazil, for instance, vehicle theft is a huge problem whereas in Japan it’s almost unheard of – the problem there is sheer weight of traffic. In China, congestion is such a problem that economic growth is threatened by the inability of infrastructure to keep pace. But simply building more isn’t the answer, so there’s a growing interest in the use of Telematics to increase capacity. Pollution is also a problem and in cities such as Beijing, ANPR is finding a role in controlling access.
“The Chinese are also showing a lot of interest in autonomous vehicles of all kinds. It demonstrates how we in other countries are looking at transport far too narrowly.”
RSS
Global Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) solution revenues will grow to $8.5bn by 2018, with ETC becoming a main source of funding for both Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Vehicle-to-X (V2X) cooperative infrastructures, according to a new report from
In fact, he says, far more notice needs to be taken by the tolling industry of technological developments in the automotive and consumer electronic fields.
Bonte sees two main technology ‘battles’ taking place within the tolling sector. In the short-range arena the battle is between Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and between short-range solutions including RFID/DSRC and wide-area solutions such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and cellular for applications with larger geographic scope. In terms of short range, RFID predominates in North America while in Europe it is DSRC while Asia has a mixed picture. For wide area solutions he sees RFID/DSRC losing out to GNSS/cellular in the longer term.
Pushing interoperability
But while the struggles for dominance continue, Bonte feels there are several issues which contribute to a certain sense of inertia. Despite initiatives such as MAP-21 legislation and the Alliance for Toll Interoperability’s new hub in the US, and the European Electronic Toll Service in the European Union which are intended to increase Toll scheme interoperability, progress has been slow. He feels that the involvement of governments, whilst worthy and in some respects necessary, will only slow developments.“Generally, there tends to be industry resistance wherever government gets involved in the regulatory effort. The fragmentary nature of the tolling sector – it’s typically point-based with a host of supporting technologies such as RFID, DSRC, GNSS and so on – doesn’t help,” he says.
“Some of the characteristics of the tolling sector are common to other sectors too, fleet management being an example. There, there are literally hundreds of proprietary solutions, an absence of standards and high costs because bespoke systems require high levels of IT integration.”
Indeed, he notes, many tolling system suppliers are realising that IT integration and running tolling schemes on behalf of road network owners are key business areas going forward. These will account for over half of all business and represent a significant step away from traditional revenue-earners such as the supply of onboard units (Chart 2).
“Road operators want a turnkey solution and many want to demise operations to a systems supplier. There’s the potential for system suppliers to earn lots of money but I’m not convinced that it’s a sustainable model. If we look at Machine-to-Machine [M2M] solutions for manufacturing and other sectors, that also provides an example of where there is common ground with tolling in the form of a lack of standards, high profits and a consequent lack of harmonisation.”
Broadening the technological scope
His mention of M2M is no accident, V2X being M2M by any other name. A shift in thinking could be brought about by the very technologies whose deployment tolling can facilitate and V2X holds potential, Bonte says, the difference being that in the V2X arena standards are perhaps more formalised.But that doesn’t mean that there is no room for change: “I’m a big believer in the future use of GNSS and in-vehicle systems for applications such as tolling because they’ll be intrinsic and already capturing data anyway,” he continues.
“If we look at the potential number of systems which a vehicle will have to carry just a few years from now – eCall, OEM embedded connectivity for infotainment, potentially some form of monitoring solution for pay-as-you-go insurance, as well as tolling and parking – it’s clear that bundling these together makes much better sense to the end user. Even eCall itself could serve as the platform for additional applications, despite being based on dated voice-over-data technology. The eCall technology’s not especially future-proof, especially because price point was a driver of choice, but it demonstrates that there are alternatives to what we have now.”
Bonte notes that DSRC is very similar to WiFi in many respects and he highlights the use of smartphones by cyclists and pedestrians for ‘Here I am’ safety applications as well as for navigation and making payments.
“The next big debate will be over whether we should be pursuing systems embedded in the vehicle or better smartphone integration. The Ford SYNC system provides a model for the latter. Further out, do we even need V2X to be DSRC-based? A new longer-range Bluetooth standard is already being looked at by some forward thinkers. Guaranteeing that the user always carries or switches on his or her phone is a challenge but ANPR provides a fall-back from an enforcement perspective.”
To some, this thinking might seem overly radical but Bonte thinks not: “Whatever we see being debated at conferences, the only constant I can see is the smartphone’s ever-greater encroachment into all areas of our lives. The typical smartphone has motion sensors, accelerometers and fairly good GPS. Despite current resistance, it has all the basics needed to carry out distance-based road user charging. Rather than continuing to resist, perhaps we should be looking at how we can use the smartphone for all different kinds of applications.”
Wide-area applications
For wide-area applications, although he expects GNSS/cellular to win through, Bonte again thinks that the precise form of the solution has yet to be decided.“For example, in the very near future we won’t just be talking about GPS. Many chipset manufacturers now incorporate GLONASS functionality into their products and other systems such as the EU’s Galileo and those being developed by China and India will be coming online.
“Smart devices’ and future vehicles’ incorporation of motion sensors and WiFi together with mobile telephony’s improving in-cell ID capabilities and Assisted GPS allow us to achieve very good positioning in urban canyons and even indoors. Solutions are precise and reliable and can even be used for parallel lane-based charging where HOV and HOT lanes are in operation. Real-time connectivity via cellular is very good now, and still improving in locations where it’s been patchy. WiFi coverage is also extending beyond our cities and if we’re able to upload information in real-time we have all of the information we need for all sorts of applications including tolling.”
More than ‘just’ tolling
All of this leans towards a more holistic environment where many of the systems used to facilitate tolling could also be used to build better traffic management products.
“Google is already doing this,” Bonte continues. “Metadata drawing on all kinds of sources, be they weather monitoring, congestion and incident detection or many other kinds of systems, is combined to give traffic information which reaches beyond historic or real-time to become predictive.”
That should be pushing us to look at tolling not just as a revenue source but as a traffic management tool, he feels: “Dynamic pricing already exists in power grids, for instance, and the roads are a utility just like any other.
“Ultimately, however, travel is a derived need. Many of us no longer need to travel to work given the kinds of jobs that we do.
Our politicians are being very short-sighted in addressing the issues in the ways that they are. They should be concentrating on incentivising and removal of the resistance to the likes of teleworking, tele-education and telehealth. The pushback against these isn’t just in the transport or tolling sector, it’s embedded throughout society as a whole. But taken together, the internet and M2M are hugely disruptive and will continue to be so.”
ABI Research’s Electronic Toll Collection: A Key Business Driver for ITS and V2I study covers types of ETC (highway, urban and area tolling), ETC technologies (RFID, DSRC, video and GNSS/cellular), use cases and benefits. It also includes an in-depth review of the main implementations and the ETC ecosystem. ETC revenue forecast per region, type of Toll collection, and technology are included.
Defining variations by region
The US remains predominantly wedded to RFID technology and Europe to DSRC whilst the picture in Asia remains mixed. But defining precisely what is happening region by region is difficult because generalisations simply cannot be made, Bonte says.
“In Brazil, for instance, vehicle theft is a huge problem whereas in Japan it’s almost unheard of – the problem there is sheer weight of traffic. In China, congestion is such a problem that economic growth is threatened by the inability of infrastructure to keep pace. But simply building more isn’t the answer, so there’s a growing interest in the use of Telematics to increase capacity. Pollution is also a problem and in cities such as Beijing, ANPR is finding a role in controlling access.
“The Chinese are also showing a lot of interest in autonomous vehicles of all kinds. It demonstrates how we in other countries are looking at transport far too narrowly.”
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