Urban environments, such as London, present many more constraints than isusual for typical tag and beacon installations. Thus, although tag and beacon technology clearly has potential application to Congestion Charging, an Urban Charge Point (UCP) solution is required that provides the flexibility to cope with a wide variety of road geometries, avoids the need for large overhead gantries, maintains high performance and does not impede theflow of traffic. This paper addresses the trial infrastructure and methodology applied to assess the performance of candidate UCP solutions, installed at 20 sites in the Southwark area of London. Data was collected from approximately 150,000 vehicle passages a day over the twelve month trial period. The simultaneous application of a number of complementary methods ofdetecting vehicle presence is described and shown to provide the "ground truth", against which UCP performance is assessed.
Abstract