Design considerations for road-use pricing and automatic toll-collection systems

The use of an automatic means of collecting revenue from a vehicle user for the use of road-space through road-use pricing or toll collection is one means of traffic demand management and is now being actively considered in the UK and throughout the world. Systems that currently exist to implement the automatic collection of road-use revenue are not particularly advanced and would not be suitable (in most cases) for large scale implementation. This paper describes the key issues and design considerations that need to be addressed in developing such a system, followed by a suggested implementation and suggested applications. Finally the paper describes an advanced transponder based debiting system which has been developed under the DRIVE II funded ADEPT (automatic debiting and electronic payment for transport) project which has been tackling and solving many of the highlighted problems with such systems. A description of the current ADEPT field trials (Cambridge, Lisbon, Goteborg, Thessaloniki and Trondheim) in automatic debiting and demand management is also presented