Possible Application of Short Range Communication Technologies in the Digital Tachograph System to Support Vehicles Filtering during Road Controls

The existing Digital Tachograph is a regulatory instrument (mandatory by Council Regulation since 1st May 2006) to enforce the application of social regulations in road transport especially with the view to increase traffic safety. It records the work and the rest times of drivers as well as the vehicle speed over time with the aim to ensure that appropriate rest periods are taken by drivers and that a maximum of permissible speed is not exceeded. The original and prime functionality of the Digital Tachograph is to document, i.e. to record, the driving history of a driver and his vehicle. Nevertheless controls by the road safety authorities are rather inefficient while time-consuming. The proposed update to the existing regulation would rather guarantee the Digital Tachograph as a compliance device rather than as an accurate recorder of driving history. Basic innovation is the application of short range communication technologies (like RFID) allowing the road authorities to scan by-passing vehicles and thus increasing the throughput by the order of ten.JRC.DG.G.7-Traceability and vulnerability assessmen

Critical Success Factors for Implementing Road Charging Systems

Road user charging is used as an 'umbrella' term to describe a wide range of applications of pricing roads and infrastructure. Road user charging includes a number of charging measures that governments and other road owners use to: i) finance new or maintain existing road infrastructure ii) manage traffic (e.g. reduce congestion) iii) minimise environmental impacts of transport iv) internalise the external costs of road transport caused, e.g., by pollution and noise emissions. Historically, the common approach to charging for road use is some form of general taxation rather than differentiated road user charging. Road user charging has long been proposed as an efficient and equitable method to pay for road use and to fund road infrastructure projects. However, there is an important distinction between charging for revenue generation purposes as opposed to pricing roads to provide congestion relief. The two basic objectives, revenue generation and congestion management, differ in several ways, as shown in the following table.