The Dutch Ministry is giving serious consideration to the installation of a distance-based charging scheme for all vehicles and all roads which would be introduced in the coming years. This Kilometre Price (KMP) scheme would be the first of its kind and include over 8 million vehicles and a road network of more than 130,000 km. Since the complete KMP system as intended will take at least until 2012 to be implemented, the Ministry is currently investigating the possibilities for phased introduction of parts of the KMP system and functionality at a considerably earlier date. One potentially viable method is to equip all vehicles with microwave based (DSRC) tags and roadside detection and enforcement infrastructure in order to introduce road-charging on selected parts of the Dutch Road network as a first phase. The purpose of this research is to investigate the feasibility and risks of early introduction of a DSRC based approach from the point of view of volume tag manufacture, delivery and support. Although this particular piece of research concentrates on the ability of suppliers to deliver the quantity of tags in the timescales required by the Ministry, it also considers some aspects of functionality and performance of tags, and the ways in which certain personalisation of the tags can be used as part of a systems design. This forms part of the intelligence gathering process. The report also highlights some of the discussions which have taken place during the factory visits relating to the system design aspects which are just as important as the tag sub-system. In section 3, the method used to conduct this research is described, from the initial award of contract through to the production of this document. In section 4, the overall conclusions of the research are presented. Section 5 provides a summary of the areas of risk which have been identified in the research. Section 6 provides a list of outstanding issues and areas for further work. Since the tag production cannot be isolated completely from the overall system design, there remain some areas for which tag suppliers can provide better answers when certain operational and functional details of the system design are settled. There is also the need to keep this information current as tag suppliers move forward with new products or variants on a current product which may more closely meet the requirements of the Ministry. In Appendix A, a copy of the blank questionnaire, as send to the suppliers which agreed to contribute to the research, can be found. All the information contained in this report is based on written documents and emails provided by the tag suppliers, conversations with employees of the suppliers and visits to selected tag supplier factories. Based on this evidence, the author has used his own judgement to draw a number of conclusions relating to the risks associated with the delivery of volume tag product within the Ministry's required timescales. TRL has only made judgements based on the evidence presented during this research project and assumes the integrity of the data provided at the time and the knowledge of the persons contacted within the organisations. (Author/publisher)
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