In September 2000, on the ITS World Congress 2000 at Turin, the enforcement concept of the Swiss heavy vehicles fee "LSVA" was presented. Focus was given to the risk analysis, the various enforcement processes, the supporting legal framework and the integration of the enforcement aspects into the whole project from the early beginning, while technical issues - like the automated enforcement system - were just mentioned briefly. In contrary to that this paper (and the presentation) deals - besides the overview - more or less solely with the enforcement system and the pilot installation of the automatic enforcement station. This includes expectations raised, tests carried out, results archived and lessons learned. The Swiss EFC System was put successfully in operation in due time by January 1st, 2001. The automated enforcement system, installed in the last quarter 2000 underwent severe and extensive tests till mid summer this year. Currently the evaluation of the 'commercial' use takes place and rollout throughout Switzerland will start soon. In total some 8 to 10 fully automated enforcement stations will represent the 'backbone' of the countrywide enforcement system, all operational by end next year. Each enforcement station allows full multilane traffic monitoring and comprises subsystems for vehicle detection (also delivering the vehicle's category and immediately eliminating data of vehicles not subject to the fee), DSRC communication, video imaging and automatic license plate reading, the latter improved by certain logics performed by the system controllers considering the DSRC information and a list of vehicles currently on their way through Switzerland.
Abstract