A sustainable mobility future places great responsibilities on public and private organisations alike. The use of ITS technologies to support this desirable future must be consistent with the needs of both regional and local transport strategies. This paper specifically addresses road charging and electronic toll collection (ETC) systems as examples of ITS applications which have clear demands and performance requirements and which attract both public and private interest. This paper explains why there is a need for standardised and interoperable ETC systems to reconcile the needs of the user (continuing mobility), traffic engineers (free flow of traffic), investors (freedom of technology choice) and operators (accuracy in fee collection). It is proposed that the technical solution for ETC must be flexible and scaleable to ensure widespread consumer acceptance within the EU. Practical experience from earlier ETC projects, from within and outside the EU, pilot installations and current procurements are presented to demonstrate how multiple requirements can be satisfied with standardised and interoperable solutions.
Abstract