Toll Collect
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Toll Collect GmbH is a German company that has developed and is running the tolling system for trucks ( LKW-Maut) on German
motorway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway, and expressway. Other similar terms ...
s. The company was a consortium led by
Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz Group AG (formerly Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler, and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive company headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufacturers. Daimler-B ...
,
Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. It was formed in 199 ...
, and Cofiroute until 2018 when it was taken over by German Government. The consortium won a bid for the development of a toll billing system from the German government. The development of the system started in September 2002. The technology is based on the
Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide ge ...
, and a web application for booking truck routes in advance. Trucks are equipped with embedded systems called "On Board Units" (OBUs). OBUs are used for positioning, monitoring and billing. Additionally, the OBUs have
infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...
and
Dedicated short-range communications Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) is a technology for direct wireless exchange of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) and other intelligent transportation systems (ITS) data between vehicles, other road users (pedestrians, cyclists, etc.), and ...
(DSRC) interfaces for exchanging data with stationary enforcement gantries and mobile enforcement on the tolled road network. Since the end of 2002 several hundred engineers and programmers worked on the project. Articles report more than 1000 experts were involved in the project. The rollout was first scheduled for the end of August 2003, but was delayed repeatedly, causing the government to forfeit toll collection on trucks using the
Autobahn The (; German , ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. Much of t ...
. The deadline was first shifted by 2 months, then by at least one year. Not until the German government purchased Toll Collect were the long-lasting disputes between Toll Collect and the German government about the payment of damages due to the long delay in the launching system resolved. There were also accusations that during the tendering procedure for the system, the offers made by non-German companies were not given fair consideration. The system was opened two years behind schedule on January 1, 2005. It was the first system in the world that deployed a national GNSS road pricing scheme. The charge per kilometre varies according to the number of axles and the vehicle's emission category, and is between 9 and 14 cents per kilometre. For a trip from Hamburg to Munich (776 km) for example, the costs lie between €69.84 and €108.64. Since the installation of an On Board Unit (OBU) by a professional service is costly and/or time-consuming, the option of paying for a specific trip tickets was also provided from the very beginning (as illustrated). In publications from December 2019, however, journalists attributed Toll Collect's whereabouts to the federal government to the contracts signed by Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer with industry representatives on the failed car toll in December 2018 and also critically assessed the role of the State Secretary and later Toll Collect boss Gerhard Schulz . According to this, the provision of parts of the Toll Collect infrastructure was probably already assured to Scheuer's contractual partners at the time before the bidding process for the Toll Collect privatization was officially ended in January 2019.


Technical background of the satellite based toll system

Generally, for any truck travelling on the German motorways, the distance-based fees can be paid by different means: through the advanced purchase of a specific route via the internet or at payment terminals (typically located in fuel stations), or fully automated through the use of OBUs that are professionally installed in the trucks. Through the use of
satellite navigation A satellite navigation or satnav system is a system that uses satellites to provide autonomous geopositioning. A satellite navigation system with global coverage is termed global navigation satellite system (GNSS). , four global systems are ope ...
, the position and the trip are data stored in the OBU which enable the device to determine the tolling fees that apply for the route driven. The data collected in the OBU are transferred to the
data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...
by mobile data communication (GSM), and processed for billing. The fact that the system is "satellite based" relates to the positioning only, not to the communication of the OBU to the data center. To prevent avoidance of toll payments (e.g. by switching off the OBUs), the trucks are photographed at approximately 300 toll enforcement gantries, and checked by approximately 450 mobile checking stations. The data generated from these compliance checks are compared in the central computing system, and enforcement measured being started. The non-compliance rate is published as being constantly less than 1%.Anfrage nach dem Informationsfreiheitsgesetz
auf fragdenstaat.de Plans to export the specific German solution to other countries were not realized, but a number of GNSS-based tolling solutions were implemented in European countries for distance-based charging of trucks. Plans to expand the system to value-added services, such as fleet management, were not implemented.


See also

* LKW-Maut


References


External links


Official Website of Toll Collect

Road tolls: How will it affect the modal split?
Master thesis written by Carlos Braga and Magnus Källgren about Toll Collect and its possible results {{Authority control Electronic toll collection Wireless locating Logistics companies of Germany