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.

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.

eh?

[EMH_Mark3]

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

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!

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: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.

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.

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...

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 ;)