The automation of toll-collection and road-use pricing systems

Hills, PJ; Blythe, PT

The automation of toll-collection and road-use pricing systems

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Peter Hills OBE, Professor Phil Blythe ORCiD

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Abstract

With the strong and persistent upward trend in the volume of road traffic , many major roads in urban areas, estuarial river crossings and national trunk roads and motorways are experiencing a rapid increase in congestion. If real incomes continue to rise, those problems of congestion will get rapidly worse throughout the 1990s. Following recent experiments in Hong Kong on road-use pricing and in Berlin and London on route guidance, it is clear that technological advance in the fields of data-communications and Road Traffic "Informatics" (RTI) will reopen the longstanding debate as to how use of the road system should be charged for. In particular , if vehicles can be charged for road-useautomatically, without stopping them to do so, then policy towards road-use pricing could be significantly changed, although the strong social and political objections may still remain to be overcome. This paper is not just centred on the technical issues posed by automatic toll-collection but clearly set within the social/political context surrounding any widespread implementation of such a policy.