Satellite-Assisted European Road Tolls Next?

Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Pay-as-you-go motoring just around the corner,' the European Space Agency (ESA) says that "road tolls could be made fairer if satellite-assisted distance pricing is implemented." Experiments are currently underway in Ireland, Portugal and Germany, before a possible extension to other countries. Potential benefits of such a road tolling system would be fairer implementation of charging on a 'pay for use' basis. All these experiments are using the US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS). But in 2010, when the system is fully implemented, it will use the Galileo satellite system."

Comments

How easy to disable?

[kramer2718]

Could the black box track the satellites inside a Faraday cage?

Re:How easy to disable?

[TWX]

If that's the case, a simple solution would be to fine anyone who does this heavily. It won't actually stop the abuse though, it'll just destroy the lives of the few who get caught.

A much smarter method, in my opinion, would be to check vehicle mileage of registered vehicles, and tax based on that. Most new cars use a digital odometer that isn't able to be rolled back by a mechanic with a screwdriver, so it would be much more secure to tax on that, and I haven't met too many people willing to tamper with their car's computer. Of course, simply removing the speedometer gear from the transmission and plugging the empty socket would take care of that on a mechanical level, but then the factory speedometer doesn't work either, so that isn't necessarily the greatest solution.

Any tracking technology that requires devices to be on the user's side can be disabled or circumvented. it's just a matter of making it hard enough and punitive enough to not comply, and easy enough to comply, that people generally comply.

Re:How easy to disable?

[zakezuke]

Righto... things like this drive me nuts. There presently already is a cheep and efficent means of taxing cars based on distance they drive. By taxing the fuel it self you have an accurate means of charging for a vehicel's use on the road. Heavier vehicels such as SUVs pay more then a honda driver due to the fact that these vehicels use more fuel per mile.

Users who wish to by-pass being taxed on the fuel they use can already make the switch to propane, methane, alcohol, hydrogen, and a number of alternatives which i'd argue they deserve a reward if their fuel solution has a postive impact on air quality.

Users who don't drive as much don't pay as much tax. Users who drive a hell of alot pay a hell of alot.

Low tech, simple, difficult to circumvent, and already implemented. Who could ask for anything more?

I imagine that we will always consider toll roads in order to actually pay for specific roads that we can't convience the general public that we all actually benifit from. That's all well and good, but generaly speaking if you want to employ a general use fee for the roads you use, take the freaking fuel and don't bother launching high tech tracking devices. Barcodes and or radio tags would be perfectly dandy to maintain flow and charge a specific use tax for toll roads. If you really want to maintain your privacy, keep a cash only lane open.

Re:How easy to disable?

[FirstEdition]

yeah, but what they really want to do is charge more for certain roads or road types - eg super-mega-freeways will be expensive (but fast and convenient), whereas smaller roads will be slow but cheap.

You can't do this by taxing fuel.

Re:How easy to disable?

[ergo98]

Why should super-mega-freeways cost more to drive on? Given the efficiency of volume, they are likely much less expensive to maintain per km driven than little rural roads.

Re:How easy to disable?

[drsmithy]

yeah, but what they really want to do is charge more for certain roads or road types - eg super-mega-freeways will be expensive (but fast and convenient), whereas smaller roads will be slow but cheap.

This is already done - speed traps.

Re:How easy to disable?

[spectrokid]

You don't seem to be familiar with the European situation. The idea about sattelite-based tracing is to make it more expensive to drive during rush-hour then at night, more expensive in city centers then in the country etc. If you take a car in Paris then you are a pretentious twit who deserves to get his socks taxed off. In rural france however, there are many areas where there is no public transport and the car is the only way to move about. In Brussels, we are considering a whole new suburban railway network. Problem is: if 5% of the people who stand in a traffic jam every day take the train, the traffic jam is gone. But these 5% are not enough to pay back the investment. So if we build it, we will have to artificially increase the jams (I am NOT kidding!!!), or make the other 95 % pay extra.

Re:How easy to disable?

[mgv]

Righto... things like this drive me nuts. There presently already is a cheep and efficent means of taxing cars based on distance they drive. By taxing the fuel it self you have an accurate means of charging for a vehicel's use on the road. Heavier vehicels such as SUVs pay more then a honda driver due to the fact that these vehicels use more fuel per mile.

One of the big attractions of tolls is that they allow governments to move road costs off balance sheets.

If you build a road and pay for it with fuel tax, you usually have to generate debt. That this can be paid for with fuel excise is of no consequence, its still a government debt.

If you get a company to build a toll road and give them the right to toll for it (in legislation as a rule) then you have no debt. Society, of course does pay for it, plus profit for the private company at about 4 times the cost of just building the road and increasing petrol tax.

If you have less government debt, Standard and Poor & Moody's will give you a better credit rating, and you can borrow at a cheaper rate, financing your current account deficits, etc.

I'm not saying this is good (in fact, I think it sucks as roads cost money no matter what, and more if they are toll road than if not), but it is a strong factor for many governments at state/federal levels in countries around the world.

Michael

cell phones

[Fuzzums]

(little bit OT, but in a way related)

cellphones are used to track traffic jams. if phones follow a certain path they're likely to be in a car and is the phone stays in a certain zone for longer than t and more phones have the same behaviour it's likely there is a traffic jam.

this system has shown to be quite accurate.

One thing that scares me

[StewedSquirrel]

One thing that scares me about these systems is the potential for spying on people.

As soon as it is mandatory for cars to have transmitting GPS recievers to track their movements on highways, then it will become standard issue in cities and other areas. Call me paranoid, but I don't WANT the government tracking me like that.

Second, along the same lines, there's the potential that the system could be used to issue things like speeding tickets and other traffic citations. I guess this is another case of the fact that people appreciate the right to BEND the law. There are some toll-systems in place now that give speeding citations if you cover the distance between two toll-booths in too short a time, but as far as I'm aware their deployment is limited.

Any comments?

Stewey

Re:One thing that scares me

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some toll-systems in place now that give speeding citations if you cover the distance between two toll-booths in too short a time

Who would have thought that the Mean-Value Theorem would someday be used to give fines. They don't know WHERE you were speeding, but the theorem is clear, there exists such a point "c". Damn.

Re:One thing that scares me

[ScrewMaster]

I agree. I live in Illinois, and we have our IPass system for the tollways. The Tollway Authority logs when and where you pass each booth using this system, and mantains those logs indefinitely. An Authority official was interviewed on the news one evening saying that they would release that information to any authorized government agency (which apparently means anyone that wants to know.) There have already been several subpoenas issued for that information, and it is nowhere near as precise as a GPS-based tracking system would be. Still, people are correctly up in arms about it. Regardless of the desire to bend the law (and you're right about that) the historical truth is very simple: increased governmental monitoring (even with good intentions) invariably leads to reduced civil liberties. They can keep their spyware and I'll keep dropping coins, thank you very much.

Re:One thing that scares me

[superyooser]

One thing that scares me about these systems is the potential for spying on people.

What scares me is having money fly out of my wallet while I'm driving along happily minding my own business. Why do we need tolls when we have taxes? Since we're going to have tolls for public services, some kind of tax ought to be reduced. (I know the story is about Europe, but the U.S., in which I live, has them too.)

The government knows it's much easier to impose taxes/tolls/fees if the people don't have to physically hand over the cash or write out the $$ amount on a check. They just make it so you never see it. That's how income taxes are taken. No gain, no loss, right? If people actually received their gross pay, and then had to fork over the tax money, I think taxes would be a lot lower. People would revolt. The same goes for tolls.

eh?

[EMH_Mark3]

Satellite-Assisted European Road Trolls? ugh, I need to stop reading Slashdot :/

Okay...

[c0dedude]

Alright, let's ignore the spying/creepyness aspect for one second. It's just plain obnoxious to tax residents, not buisnesses, but residents, who go one more roadtrips and commute farther. One should know where the tolls are and how much they are instead of just a sattelite odometer tax.

Good Idea

[JahToasted]

put up some expensive satellites, give up your privacy, all so you can avoid paying a gas tax. Real Smart.

Of course we wouldn't want SUV owners pay more per mile than economy car owners do we? That wouldn't be fair!

Re:Good Idea

[timeOday]

Agreed completely! Gas tax is already such an elegant solution to the problem, because the energy from the gas is what wrecks the roads in the first place. Of all the taxes out there, the gas tax seems the most fair!

Re:Good Idea

[namespan]

the energy from the gas is what wrecks the roads in the first place.

It is what wrecks the road. It's transfered via combustion process into mechanical energy and transferred to the road by the vehicle, true, but gasoline is most certainly the primary source of the energy in question.

How is this really different

[leviramsey]

..from current toll-road models?

For instance, when you get on the Mass Pike (the main line of the Pike, not the extension into Boston), you get a ticket. You turn in the ticket when you get off, and the toll is computed based on how far you travel (a rough formula is distance in miles times approximately 3.5 cents/mile with a minimum toll of 25 cents).

Barrier toll highways (a la the Garden State) substitute fairly regularly spaced toll booths charging a constant (and higher than the ticket type) rate.

In both cases, it's charging for the amount of road usage.

Re:How is this really different

[DrInequality]

Actually, the charge is (largely) for collecting the toll. The cost of manual toll collection is quite high.

Hence, the desire for fully automatic systems. Transponders are clearly a good model for commuters/frequent traffic, but don't work for occasional road users.

That said, I don't really see the value of GPS to a transponder. If the transponder only has a short range radio, then you don't need GPS. On the other hand, if the transponder has a longer range radio, then privacy goes out the window.

black box

[Ed Thomson]

Under the proposal, all vehicles will carry a 'black box'

If you manage to remove the black box from your vehicle you can avoid the road tolls.

How are they going to stop this?

Re:black box

[Have Blue]

If your vehicle isn't transmitting, the gate doesn't register you. If you go through anyway, the camera goes off and you get a ticket in the mail (if they're nice) or you hit the barrier/gate/non-retracted STD device (if they're not nice).

Typical bill

[OpenSourcerer]

Toll Usage : 56 Euros
Satelite surcharge : 734 Euros
Getting a ticket because the sattelite tracked how fast you went : priceless

Re:I, for one, welcome our GPS inhancements.

[AntiOrganic]

Because turning off his car while it's travelling at 95 MPH is going to do something other than flipping the car off a highway embankment.

And even so, this could possibly work in Europe -- but what about the US, where the government had an unprotected, unpassworded page for registering .mil domains? Don't you think there's a bit of a potential for abuse here? If you want to talk about cyberterrorism becoming a reality, what if a 15-year-old Saudi Arabian can shut down the cars of every man and woman in America, bringing them to a dead halt? I think I'll pass. Billions on defense, or an iota of common sense? I'll pick the latter, thanks.

Tell-tale sign

[PaulBu]

The government hopes to raise 650 million euros a year through the new charges.

Even given privacy/personal liberties angle to be completely aside (which I am not ready to do just yet!), the only "fair" way to implement such a system would be if "they" would promise to take less tax on private citizen as a result of that. No, "they" just want to get more bucks to spend on bureocracy... (relating to the old argument "If not for the Govt., you would not have the modern highway system")

Paul B.

You gotta be kidding me!!!

[rock_climbing_guy]

BEGIN RANT

I would like to say that I just can't believe this. Europe is a place where you must pay a tax on your gasoline that is more than the cost of the gasoline itself - that in itself is an insane infringement on our freedoms. The idea that European nations need to collect more taxes and fees is proposterous. However, liberal European politicians never felt that there was a problem with any tax or fee. I predict that within the next decade, the French and German governments will provide a licensing system that charges citizens for the air they breathe.

END RANT - Now, mod me down!!!

Re:You gotta be kidding me!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we look at it this way: I pay TAXES to fund the roads I don't use because I don't own a car and have chosen to use public transport. You COMMUNISTS are trying to make me pay for a service which I don't even use, meanwhile you foul the air I breathe with your toxic fumes.

I think it is fair and reasonable you should have to pay very high petrol taxes, not that you should give up your privacy. You consume natural resources, tons of funds are spent on building roads and maintaining them and you pollute the environment.

I fail to see how "roads" are a right, they are a privelage - you should expect to pay for them from your own pocket. Don't talk to me about "freedom".

Why not just tax fuel?

[whoever57]

Fuel tax has the dual advantage of discouraging driving and discouraging vehicles that use large amounts of fuel.

Oh, wait, Europe already does that.... HOW many $/gallon?

But really, some of the proposals are to tax what were freeways -- yet it is clear better for the environment and safer if people use freeway-style roads instead of local roads.

Simple...

[pla]

I don't see what this could possibly accomplish that a tax on gasoline couldn't

For the simple answer, a tax on fuel rather than miles "unfairly" nails those who chose to destroy our environment (quicker than the rest) by driving big gas-guzzlers.

Of course, one could counter with the idea that gas-guzzlers also tend to weigh more, causing more damage to the road, thus warranting a higher tax regardless of the environmental impact, but, don't say that too loud around the current US oligarchy...

Now me, I think we should tax based on total time spent on the road, to penalize grannies out to cause their regular Sunday afternoon traffic-jam. ;-)

Road Toll?

[Nermal6693]

In my country, the "road toll" is the number of people who have died (or maybe just been in an accident) due to road accidents in the holidays (eg. Easter road toll of 3). You can imagine how I read the title, satellite-assisted road accidents??

The only charges we have are occasional ones such as when they built a new expensive bridge across a harbour, you had to pay $1 when you want across. Now that they've regained all the money, you don't have to pay anymore.

A Solution in Search of a Problem

[John Murdoch]

You can track vehicle positions. It's much harder to track which roads have been used.
I've done a bunch of work with GPS-based vehicle tracking systems--and it is entirely feasible to track vehicle positions. However--it is something else entirely to track which roads a given vehicle has used. The problem isn't with GPS--the problem is with the accuracy of map data: sometimes there's a pretty substantial difference between where GPS reports are, and where the actual roadway is supposed to be. (A very common instance of this is service roads--the roads that typically parallel a limited-access highway in urban areas. Is the truck on I-78 or on the adjacent service road?

This is a ridiculously expensive way to charge tolls.
This problem has already been solved in the U.S.: you can travel from Massachusetts to Virginia using EZ-Pass. And the EZ-Pass system costs lots less to implement. For starters, the on-windshield transponders cost a few bucks; substantially less than even the lowest-cost GPS vehicle locators (which use cellular telephone control channels to report).

So why dream up such a boondoggle?
Oh...that's right. Because the Galileo system is just an out-of-this-world waste of money. So the European Space Agency needs to dream up problems for their solution to solve. And the Europeans wonder why their economies are stagnant.

The future of driving

[vudufixit]

Might be this - EVERYTHING you do is monitored and metered. Your speed will be checked in real time. A fine is assessed based perhaps on how much you're exceeded the speed limit, and for how long. Your insurance bill may vary month to month in proportion to our speeding. Your driving habits will be monitored. If you take an excursion to somewhere you usually don't go, you'll be flagged for extra scrutiny. And you'll have to pay a special registration tax if you want to keep driving an older vehicle that doesn't have any monitoring black boxes.

Tax Gas, Not Roads

[Erick the Red]

Since people are already paying a tax on their gas usage, they shouldn't have to pay tolls. Governments argue that the roads need to be payed for, but roads are such a help to the economy that the cost should be the responsibility of ALL taxpayers, not just the ones that use them. Think of the last ten things you've bought and try to guess how many of them did NOT use a highway or freeway to get to the store. Roads are the backbone of any nation.

So would insurance companies look at this data?

[dharma21]

They could charge more when they know you travel more miles than average.

Galileo down to the meter

[aSiTiC]

``Galileo will deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to the metre range, which is unprecedented for a publicly available system.''

The current US-operated GPS system only allows this type of accuracy for military purposes. I feel it is a little irresponsible to give civilians (including criminals and terrorists) access to such accurate targeting systems. Maybe ESA wants to have a marketable advantage over GPS but it may go to far IMO.

I'm not trolling for replies concerning irresponsible military uses, that is another topic...

Re:Galileo down to the meter

[cobyrne]

"The current US-operated GPS system only allows this type of accuracy for military purposes. I feel it is a little irresponsible to give civilians (including criminals and terrorists) access to such accurate targeting systems."

A pair of blunt scissors is all you need to open most things. I feel it is a little irresponsible to give civilians (including criminals and terrorists) access to box cutters (as was used by the terrorists two years ago). Sheesh.

They have proposed something similiar in the US.

[theycallmeB]

Specifically, the Oregon legislature, in its infinite lack of wisdom, proposed replacing the current gas tax with a GPS based system that would track the total number of miles you drive regardless of road type (Previous Slashdot Article). The GPS receiver/controller would be mounted on the car and would report the number of miles driven to a receiver built into the gas station so the road tax could be added to your total. They thought this would be better received than an increase in the gas tax.

And they were wrong. Even those not concerned about obvious privacy issues objected to the costs of the GPS unit, costs of upgrading gas stations, getting billed for travel on private roads and the fact that it penalizes onwers of fuel efficient vehicles by charging a flat rate. That and refitting older vehicles. And billing out-of-state drivers. The list of problems was endless, the benefits were few to none. The backlash was noteworthy and I have not see much more about it since it was first proposed; with luck the legislative will realize just how bad of an idea it was and drop it forever.

Oh, in case some think I am an anti-tax nutcase, I support reasonable increases in gas taxes and vehicle registration fees to pay for the massive road network I enjoy so much. Tollways, however, annoy me to no end.

it better be more evenly matched to usage...

[acidrain69]

because there is no way my 1 ton Nissan does as much damage to the road as a 3 ton Hummer. They better get taxed more. Yeah, I know it says europe, not the US, and most of europe drives smaller cars. I'm just saying WHEN the stupid politicians in the US get ahold of this, they do it fairly. I don't know why they don't just apply it to gasoline. Bigger cars that do more road damage use more gasoline. It's that simple. You reward the smaller more efficient cars, especially the hybrids. But the US wouldn't be interested in that....

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

[Pig Hogger]

Charging by distance travelled on roads is just plain STUPID. It may look like it's being fair, but in reality, it is not.

Why would one want to charge people for travelling on roads? To pay for upkeep and maintenance.

Well, why don't you charge more to those who destroy the road the most?

And what does make one destroy the road more than the next guy? WEIGHT.

Weight. The heavier you are, the more you destroy the road.

So you have to get heavier vehicles to pay more for the road.

Now, what correlates nicely with vehicle weight?

PETROL CONSUMPTION. That's right. The heavier you are, the more petrol you need just to move about.

And, guess what? Petrol is taxed. Yes! There is actually a (gasp!) tax on petrol!!!

So, the more petrol you take, the more tax you pay.

And, better yet, you pay the tax wherever you travel. No need for toll booths, no need for fancy schmanzy technology.

Plain simple good old-fashioned accounting will do it.

Want more money for the roads? Want it to be collected fairly?

Just increase the petrol tax.

Some misunderstandings

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I live in Germany, where a toll is to be collected for vehicles over 3.5t from November on. There are heavy problems with the collection system, which is based on a combination of terminals located along all highways or (depending on the taste of the vehicles owner) 'black boxes' that automatically get the toll from your bank account, measuring your road usage by GPS and transmitting the data by GSM nets. While with the black box solution it is possible to track you down and even make up motion profiles of your vehicle, the first way to pay the toll is completely anonymous, you just buy a ticket like for a bus or subway.
The other error is about Galileo. ESA says much about technical advantages and improved accuracy, but the most important reason for Galileo is beeing independent from the US (GPS) or Russia (GLONASS), because both have the possibillity to switch off their systems or at least disrupt accuracy in times of conflict, which is unbearable for applications like "location based services" in mobile communication (like ordering a taxi to your exact location, calling for help or only let your phone show you the way to next pub ;)

We all seem to be at it...

[rediguana]

I really can't decide which is worse. GPS or RFID? I used to think that we had pretty rational politicians in NZ - until I read this recently.

Motorists face travel tax and 'Big Brother' microchip law enforcement

Motorists face being taxed on how far they travel under government plans to generate cash. Transport Minister Paul Swain said with vehicles becoming more fuel efficient, revenue from petrol tax would drop and alternative charges needed to be considered. It is one of a number of transport schemes being looked at by officials, including a Big Brother-style project to equip every car with a personalised microchip so law-breaking motorists can be prosecuted by computer.

If fuel economy is the problem, then the simple and cheap solution is to raise the petrol tax a suitable proportion. It does not require extra costs to create the infrastructure to deal with the increased fuel efficiency issue.

That argument alone should be enough to show that this is not about efficiency and tax, but something else. I'm guessing that something else is that they really would like to invade citizens privacy. Of course if they can automate mindless policing functions, such as vehicle registrations, parking fines, speeding; then that frees up a police force to focus on real crime. Here in NZ police have quotas for speeding fines that they have to meet!

I think these proposals must be looked at in the broader context of what the technological change will mean for society. There are some benefits such as more efficient policing, but the potential privacy costs are huge, and I would suggest that not everyone will agree with that.

What really SCARES ME

[LINM]

You apply accurate positioning over time and you get:
VELOCITY!!!

I can just see phase II involving "speeding ticket as you go without even incurring the inconvenience of pulling you over". And no bothersome checks, they can just deduct the fine from your account. How nice!

In phase III they can watch for cars leaving bars at 3AM. Of course if those cars speed, they'll get pulled over in person. That is until the in-car breathalizers are installed to see if your are drunk and then auto-drive kicks in and drives you to jail. Of course that would be after your sentence is determined via an online forum on the way there.

Think I'll throw out my bread machine and stick with coin toll booths.

Opt out??

[StewedSquirrel]

Opt out of what?? Out of getting monitored for your speed? Isn't that kind of a no brainer?

or.. do you mean "opt out" as in, just NOT sign up for the service? Thankfully it's optional...

Stewey

Doing something similar in the SF Bay Area

[GoCal92]

In the SF Bay Area, we've been using the Fast Trak system for a while. These are wireless transponders that allows you to drive through toll booths for the bridges around the bay without having to stop to pay. The transponder identifies your car as you pass through, and they just bill your credit card.

They recently expanded this program by embedding sensors around various highways. The sensors track people with the Fastrak transponders as they drive by. What they use this for is for tracking how fast people are going. You can then log onto a website that shows the average speeds of people traveling at different points along the highway. This tells you not only if there's traffic, but how bad the traffic is.

When they started this program, they sent me a letter telling me that they wouldn't use the information for any other purposes than traffic monitoring. They also included a foil pouch into which I could put the transponder if I didn't want them to track me.

It's actually pretty cool. I log onto the website and check the commute before I leave home or work - and I know the rate of speed at different points along the highway I'm traveling.

automated speeding tickets?

[sllim]

Nothing irks me more then automated ticketing machines, wether it be red light traps or speed traps they are bad, bad, bad, bad and bad.

But if the governement has enough information to say that I did $32 worth of traveling last month then they also have the information they need to mail me speeding tickets.

Evil.

It isn't speeding tickets I am against.
On the contrary, a smart and well run police department does an enormous public safety service by running traps.

You post a cop car on a busy and fast stretch of road and you make a point.
People like me slow down and do a reality check.
Others get written tickets.
It slows traffic to a reasonable level.

But automated speed traps, what public safety mechanism do they serve?
I have never gotten one of those tickets. But I can only imagine what it is like. How long does it take for them to issue it to you?
Do you even remember the stretch of road where it occured?
Does the automated speed trap actually affect the speed of the traffic?

While I am for using police and governemnt to enforce laws I am against using the police as a pure revenue mechanism.

Anyone that allows a GPS tolled road is not very far away from automated GPS ticketing.

German vs Austrian Systems

[ewn]

There is a design lesson in here.

In Germany, the toll collect system was supposed to begin September 1st. The implementing consortium (bigshots like DaimlerChrysler and Deutsche Telekom) missed that deadline, so it was pushed back to November 1st, and this new deadline is in doubt, too. The On-Board-Units that every truck has to carry are

• not enough: the consortium initially figured they'd need about 50000 units for the entire country
• defective: as many as half of the delivered units show defects. Some even self-destruct on starting the truck's engine
• expensive: they cost several hundred Euros apiece, and logistics companies who have to buy them are complaining

PR-wise it's a disaster.

Last week, manager-magazin.de ran an interview with Peter Newole, executive at Austria's equivalent, Europpass system, which does the same things TollCollect is supposed to do, only that it's cheaper and actually works. (The interview is in German, sorry.) Basically, what Mr. Newole says is that the two systems are doing similar things in vastly different ways. In both countries, trucks have to carry boxes that can communicate with base stations to register their location. Based on these location profiles, the toll is calculated. But the design of these boxes is completely different:

• The Austrian boxes are dumb clients. These things can receive a microwave signal and respond with an ID or, if the box thinks it has been tampered with, the ID and an alarm signal. They can record the IDs of the last dozen base stations passed. They know when their batteries run low. Their user interface consists of beeps: one for a successful pass of a base station, two if it's a prepaid box and the prepaid account has hit zero, many if the batteries have to be changed. Batteries have to be changed every five years and this can be done in a number of places throughout Austria. The boxes are provided to the trucks at no cost and all the driver has to do is glue it to the windscreen.
• The German on-board units (OBU) are smart clients. They are supposed to know the license plate of the truck the're installed in, be able to calculate the OBU's location via GPS and transmit this information via the GSM cell phone net to its servers, so these things are GPS receivers and cell phones combined. They are troo big for batteries and have to be hooked up with the truck's electricity circuit, and there is a complicated setup procedure to tell the OBU what truck it's installed in. And the original schedule allowed all of eleven months for development, testing, mass production, deployment and user training of these OBUs.

The design lesson is obvious: The more of something you are going to deploy, the simpler it has to be. Put the logic into the servers and make the clients as dumb as you can.

Not experiments, live

[Wackston]

1. The German system at least isn't an experiment goes live this year. It is (currently) GPS/cellphone based.

2. Its for collecting truck Tolls on Freeways.

3. The (main) reason its there is the Problem that currently German taxpayers pay for the Freeways but a goodly precentage of the trucks carving the Asphalt are in transit from and to outside Germany.

4. The easy option of simply taxing Truck fuel doesn't work since the trucks easily have the range to fuel more or less where they please.

Re:Re Fairer ways to tax

[zakezuke]

A fuel tax is a very unfair way to tax cars, especially in Europe

No, it's perfectly fair, what you pay is based on your consumption of fuel which tends to be proportional to how much you drive.

Our present system tends to car users in rural areas more than car owners in urban areas because the distances they have to drive tend to be larger.

This is what i'm not fully understanding. A person in a rural area has to drive more then a person in a urban area. They use more road daily, create more wear and tear on the road daily, they pay more money to use the road cause they use it more.

More over, less users on a particular road doesn't mean less cost, far from it. If you want to be realistic it costs more money per person on a lightly traveled road to put it in then it does on a with more people each paying their fair share.

Charging people a tax based on how many miles they use the road seems to be exactly the target goal. A tax on the fuel it uses is perfectly fair because it not only takes distance traveled into account, but also the vehicels weight.

Now... if you still think it's unfair for rural users to pay more money because they are required to use a car, there are two easy solutions.

1. Lower the tax for the rural users, either at the pump, with a card based tax discount, or some sorta refund from the tax department.

2. Move to a place with public transport so you don't have to use a car at all.

You can start nickpicking about rural users feeling like they are getting the short end of the stick, just as major metropolitan areas might feel it's not nessicary for their hard earned dollars to go into rural roads they don't even use, but let's face it... we all benifit from roads. Without roads you wouldn't have such swift access to goods and services, esp if you are a rural user. It's only common sence that a group effort to fund roads benifits all people. Rural users pay more to get anywhere... that's just a fact of living in a rural area.

If you still feel it is unfair... then I know at least in england there is a major major tax break for switching to propane fuel, as well as the benifit of lower cost per gallon due to less taxes. Propane is one of the lowest cost conversions i'm aware for automobiles. Even rural cars polute, you don't don't notice it as much.

Sorry, taxing users based on how much road they use makes perfect sence to me, and fuel is a fairly accurate means of metering useage. Drive a motorcycle, you use less fuel and pay less tax.

Cynical Moi?

[pklong]

Call me cynical, but is this just a way to effectively increase fuel tax and to keep the truckers off the governments back.

A couple of years ago in the UK there was a fuel crisis for a few days caused by truckers and farmers blocking the distribution depts and refineries. In little more than a day panicing motorists emptied every single filling station in the UK.

Since then we have seen the London congestion charge and the new motorway north of Birmingham will be a toll road (approx 6 pounds for approx 40 miles). Petrol prices have remained lower than the 86p/litre (approx 4 pounds per gallon) that caused the protests.

I somehow doubt the tax will hit the truckers anywhere near as hard as they will hit car drivers.

Re:Re Fairer ways to tax

[misterpies]

You just don't get it. the road usage charge we are talking about IS NOT MEANT JUST TO COVER THE COST OF REPAIRING THE ROAD. It is meant to improve the quality of life.

In rural areas, traffic is not a problem. It may cause wear-and-tear on the tarmac, but it doesn't result in excessive pollution, noise, danger to pedestrians, delayed journeys. These are all factors which not only affect people living in cities, but cost the economy lots of money. (Billions of dollars in productivity are lost every year due to people & goods stuck in traffic.)

The money raised from these schemes should be ploughed back, not into roads, but into better public transport and local facilities so that people don't need to use cars so much. That way you create a virtuous circle reducing car use and improving quality of life.

I live in central London. Since the congestion charge started 6 months ago (five pounds to drive in central london during the working day), traffic outside my window has dropped dramatically. Noise is down. Pollution is down. The number of people getting run over is down. Money raised has been used to buy more buses and subsidise bus fares, so I can buy a day bus pass for less than half the price of the congestion charge, and be reasonably sure that the bus will arrive quickly and on schedule. That's the point.

Re:"driving", as in WHERE?

[PaulBu]

Driver's manuals for both US states where I lived (NY and CA)got to great length to explain that "driving is a priviledge, not a right", this is why cops can stop and search a car, but not a pedestrian (without probable cause), AFAIK.

Paul B.