The Silent Penguin

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September 15, 2003

For whom the toll tolls

Take a look at the state of the current German toll collecting project and you may wonder just what has happened to a country that used to be so on the cutting edge of innovations. But first things first.
Toll is not that widespread in the European union. Some countries have toll booths on certain autobahns and some countries make you buy a sticker to show you've paid the toll for say a year.
Germany has only recently begun to think about toll collecting. The decision was first made to collect toll from trucks and based on the distance they drive on German motorways. So far so good.
A consortium of companies, including Daimler Chrysler and Deutsche Telekom founded TollCollect the company that is now responsible for implementing the project. "So they are building the toll-booths?" you might ask...
Well no. You see the plan was bigger and umm.....better. The idea was to use automatic "toll-bridges" built over the autobahns and satellite based GPS systems to track the trucks. Each truck was to be equipped with a device (the German term is "On-Board-Unit" - really) that registered which autobahn the truck was currently driving on and the amount of toll. The toll amount varies according to the type of truck and the autobahn the truck is driving on.
Apart from the automatic registration using the on-board-unit, the brave truck driver can also register at toll-terminals that have been set up in various gas stations. And it's possible to register the route using an Internet based application.
The concept was applauded and supported by the German government and was turned into a very prestigious project capable of showing how far ahead Germany is technologically. A first date was set and everything was groovy.
Sounds good doesn't it? Only one small problem - it doesn't work.
The first date - the 31st of August - came and went. No toll. The next date was set - the 2nd of November. Now it doesn't look as though that date will be met either. The reasons? Oh, various ones - for example: not enough trucks equipped with the devices (only 80 000 of the necessary 450 000 trucks equipped - and only half those installed actually work), the on-board-units that do work don't register the correct toll (the same route registers with different prices on different days), route-registration via the Internet application takes a quick 40 .... umm.. minutes and there are various other problems.
One of the consequences of the delay is that the sum of around 990 million Euros will be lost. Money that the German government has already spent.
Currently the chances of the toll-collecting starting on the 1st of November is given at a very optimistic 50:50. Chances are we won't see toll-collection on German autobahns until somewhere in the first quarter of 2004.
And probably a few folk looking for new jobs - real soon now.
By the way .. does this sound like any project you know?

Posted by Matthew at September 15, 2003 09:38 PM

Comments

Posted by: Jim Hughes at September 16, 2003 11:00 AM

Posted by: Huw Price at February 17, 2004 02:18 PM