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Solutions
Road Charging & Telematics
Collecting tolls without barriers
Satellite-supported toll collection directs transport flows, distributes the costs and supports the use of vehicles which are less harmful to the environment – without hindering traffic flow.
Facts & figures
- Since the toll was launched, the proportion of modern trucks heavier than 12 tons with low emissions technology has enormously increased in Germany. In 2005 the proportion of vehicles in emissions classes S5 and EEV amounted to less that 1 percent of the total number of miles traveled. In the fourth quarter of 2009 this figure had risen to a good 55 per cent.
- Toll Collect has registered a total of around 900,000 trucks from 127,000 companies from 41 countries. On-board units for calculating tolls are currently installed in 642,000 trucks. And the proportion of foreign vehicles with on-board units has increased further, to 42 per cent.
- To date, more than 140 billion kilometers have been recorded and billed using the satellite-based toll collection system. The solution already has the technological interfaces for barrier-free toll collection in Europe, which the EU wishes to see implemented as early as 2012.
Technology
- The toll collection system in Germany is based on mobile communications technology (GSM) and the GPS satellite positioning system (Global Positioning System). The core of the automatic booking system is a vehicle device called an on-board unit (OBU). With the help of GPS satellite signals and other positioning sensors, the OBU automatically calculates for the driver which routes he has traveled, works out what the toll charges will be on the basis of the vehicle and rate parameters set and then sends this data by mobile communications to the Toll Collect data center for further processing.
Studies on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Transport assume that in 2025 there will be around 13 percent more cars on the roads than today in Germany alone. Long-distance goods traffic will even increase by more than 80 per cent. In light of this development, it must be ensured that toll collection won't create any additional bottlenecks on the roads and is able to function across borders.
Smooth billing for Europe
T-Systems therefore offers cities and federal states a road charging solution based on GPS satellite technology which makes it possible to determine a vehicle’s position. Text messages send information on distances traveled from the on-board unit in the vehicle directly to the IT systems of the toll collecting company. T-Systems offers customers all the services required for toll collection as well as for billing and customer relationship management – from implementation and integration, through toll charging and calculating rates, to data evaluation.
The telematics solution also makes other services possible – such as transmitting the output of harmful emissions, which enables tolls to be charged depending on the emissions level and therefore encourages the use of low emissions vehicles. In Germany, T-Systems set up the truck toll system for Toll Collect and has been operating it since 2005.
