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| Toll Collect faces a new challenge.
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09/12/04 |
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Doubts are growing over the readiness of the German distance-based charging system ahead of its projected launch date of 1st January 2005.
News coming out of Toll Collect, the consortium charged with running the scheme, indicates a far lower level of orders for the electronic on-board units necessary to ensure the smooth running of the system, than could have been expected. Estimates of the number of heavy goods vehicles using the German roads network vary but it is thought to be in the region of 1 million. Yet only 290,000 OBUs have so far been ordered from the manufacturers with about 120,000 actually fitted.
Unless considerable additional numbers of OBUs can be fitted in the remaining period before 1st January, most transactions will have to be dealt with manually or through the Internet, considerably slowing the free flow of traffic through tolling plazas, with implications for other non-commercial traffic.
The contract to provide a national, distance-based road user charging scheme for lorries has been dogged by legal challenges, political arguments and concerns over the robustness of the satellite-based technology concerned. After a string of delays, the German government began imposing a daily fine on the consortium at the beginning of November 2003 for each day that it failed to begin operations. Toll Collect was then given until the end of January 2004 to provide a definitive date for the commencement of the scheme. Just over two weeks after the deadline, following a fresh offer from the consortium proposing a further 28 month delay, the German government moved to cancel the contract. After a period of negotiation, Toll Collect were given another opportunity.
The Toll Collect Consortium, consisting of Deutsche Telekom, DaimlerChrysler, Siemens and Cofiroute have been indicating for some time that they fully expect operations to begin, as scheduled, on 1st January 2005 despite continuing software problems that have resulted in the occasional display of erroneous messages on the OBU. Quite how they expect to get round this most recent difficulty is not known.
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