Road Pricing Technology Trials

Background

Transport for London (TfL) wished to advise the Mayor of London on the feasible technology options for future road charging and traffic management schemes that would intercept with potential national and European schemes.
These trials were to evaluate new camera and numberplate reading systems, tag and beacon systems, positioning technologies, including GPS/GNSS and GSM, for the purposes of area charging or distance based charging, and the related customer communication and traffic management facilities which may be required to enable customer payment accounts.

Business Challenge

Our client required:

• Leadership in the Road-User Pricing market within the UK and a deep understanding of the London charging scheme
• A detailed understanding of the underlying technologies and their operation within a road pricing context
• An ability to specify, design and implement on-street trials and measurement systems for all the solutions to be tested
• An in-depth understanding of the role of the technology within the enforcement framework and the need for evidential robustness of data captured
•  Ability to deliver and manage an end-to-end trials programme involving multiple suppliers over a 4 year time frame.

Our Approach

Consulting Stream were able to provide a project manager, the key technical architects and other members of the project team to design and build the trials and conduct an independent assessment of the various technologies.  This focused not only upon the individual technical components, but on the overall end-to-end system across a wide range of business processes.  There were over 30 suppliers’ equipments tested.  Our approach investigated the solutions in 3 Stages: Proof of Concept, Technical Feasibility and Operational Feasibility.  Each Stage provided a comparative assessment of the individual solutions and set benchmarks with which to assess existing and future solutions.
The trials required four key elements:

• A range of typical equipment/systems representative of the solutions available now or in the near future
• A robust data collection and analysis platform capable of receiving and processing multi-million data elements; our team designed and built a complex data capture and measurement environment
• A standard (“truth”) against which the performance could be measured in a number of agreed use-cases representing typical traffic scenarios in London
• Careful administration of drivers, cars and equipment to accurately log routes, times diversions or any malfunctions.

Business Outcome

The results of these trials informed TfL’s strategy for road user charging and the feasibility of customer payment accounts using new technology.  The results were used to determine the solution implemented for the Western Extension to the Central Zone (which went live in Feb 2007), the new technologies which should be enabled for the re-procurement of the main service provider contracts (2007-2009) and the strategy for adopting the EC Directives on Electronic Fee Collection and which became UK law in Feb 2007,  and the architecture of the Low Emissions Zone (going live in Feb 2008). Consulting Stream acted as a key adviser in this strategic decision-making process.

Services Provided

• Project Management
• Systems procurement and selection
• Systems development
• Communications Infrastructure Strategy Advice
• Large Scale Infrastructure Deployment
• Protoyping
• Proof of Concept Evaluation
• Technical and operational feasibility assessment
• Advice on future road ITS Solution and Emerging Technologies
• Reporting and generation of technical papers

Skills Deployed

• Location Based (GSM, GPRS) Technology
• Tag & Beacon (DSRC, RFID) Technology
• Satellite Positioning Systems Technology
• Camera Based (ANPR, CCTV) Technology
• Real-Time Traffic Management Systems Technology
• Procurement
• Business Case development
• Server and datacentre environment design
• IP network design and implementation

» Download a PDF of this case study