Road tolling in an urban environment

By Per Jarle Furnes

Per Jarle Furnes offers an insight into the multi-faceted world of road tolling, outlining the most effective methods and why innovative, concerted road tolling can help reduce congestion and finance public transport.

During the last decade, road tolling has grown popular as a means of financing road infrastructure developments across the world. Several cities have developed various forms of tolling, with the intention to reduce traffic and finance their road investments. Based on successful urban road tolling scheme implementations in cities like London, Singapore, Oslo and Stockholm, we will discuss some critical aspects of these schemes.

What are the motivators for road tolling in an urban environment?

The most prominent difficulties many cities face are traffic congestion, increased travelling time and pollution. London had, in the year prior to the introduction of their congestion charging scheme, the same average travelling speed as one hundred years ago. Hence, reducing the congestion will increase travelling speed, which again is expected to have a strong positive impact on business activity. Reducing travelling time and congestion further has a positive impact on air pollution levels and the environment.

What form should urban tolling take?

Open Road Tolling (ORT), where the user pays a one-off fee at a toll gate, is the preferred choice for most cities. Elements like discounts schemes as a function of travelling time and/or area exemptions adds severe complications to the operations model, which increases the cost due to the increased service-level performance requirements these issues bring to the front end and back office systems. Equally critical are the efficient procedures implemented to handle those users that drive without making legal payments. Users in cities like London and Stockholm have valid licence plates and public licence plate registries are kept up to date, so highly capable Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology severely reduces the operational costs in these particular cities. However, the quality of licence plates and licence plate registries vary from country to country, and this must be taken into account when considering different urban tolling schemes.  

When combined with high infringement fees, ANPR works well as the sole technology for capturing traffic data. However, the geography and local legislation will in most situations promote combinations of ANPR and wireless electronic tags to capture passage data. The most popular wireless technology options are Rf-id tags, the CEN-approved (European Committee for Standardisation) Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).

The most prominent reason why CEN DSRC is preferred in many large-scale implementations where end-users take part in the scheme is that it simply offers the best cost-benefit ratio. CEN DSRC is backed by international standards enabling multi-vendor supplies similar to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) business. It also has multi-application capability and high security comparable to that of the bank sector. All this comes at low capital expenses together with the fact that the end users can install the CEN DSRC tag themselves.

The recommended solution in most urban road tolling schemes is the use of CEN DSRC as primary data collection with ANPR as the technology of choice for enforcement. We also need to reiterate the pre-requisites to implement an ORT scheme in an urban environment. Those are public acceptance, alternative public means of transportation, political motivation, legal framework, contractual liability and road agencies inter-operability for enforcement of non-local vehicles.

Several cities have implemented a full scale urban tolling scheme with great success. Various toll schemes such as that in Stockholm have proven that users can actually understand and accept such implementation due to the reduction of traffic at peak hours and greater road quality based on larger investments in road infrastructure.

However, developing public transport systems parallel to introducing road tolling is crucial. In many cities this has meant investments into increased public transportation capacity, intelligent bus systems, and park and ride systems. In Stockholm a 20 percent decrease in pollution was reported along with 20-30 percent reduction in travel time, when the combined measures became effective in 2006.

The key issue is that tolling can finance the road infrastructure and public transport scheme but should also be implemented to encourage drivers to use alternative modes of transportation.

Per Jarle Furnes, Master of Science and Master of Technology Management, has been involved in the intelligent transportation business since 1992. Furnes has been appointed to several CEN and ISO standardisation committees. His work for Q-Free has included roles in R&D, Project Management, Chief Technology Officer and currently New Business Development.