Electronic Toll Collection Systems and their Interoperability: The State of Art

The European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) was created in 2004 with the aim of ensuring interoperability among the existing electronic toll collection (ETC) systems in Europe. However, the lack of cooperation between groups of stakeholders has not made possible to achieve this goal ten years later. The purpose of this research is to determine the better way to achieve interoperability among the different ETC systems in Europe. Our study develops a review of the six main ETC systems available worldwide: Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Satellite systems (GNSS), Tachograph, and Mobile communications tolling systems. The research also provides some insight on different emerging technologies. By focusing on different operational and strategic aspects offered by each technology, we identify their main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and makes different recommendations to improve the current framework. The research concludes that given the diversity of advantages and inconveniences offered by each system, the selection of a certain ETC technology should also take into account its potential to overcome the weaknesses in the current ETC framework. In this line, different policy recommendations are proposed to improve the present ETC strategy at the EU.