Toll collection is an important element of highway operations. More and more, automatic tolling is adopted on highways throughout the world, where various detection and payment technologies are used to make collection effective and accurate.
Toll collection is an important element of highway operations as the toll collected can help fund the maintenance of the highway or the construction of new infrastructure. Manual collection, whereby drivers stop to pay toll to real workers, is time-consuming and causes traffic jams. Automatic tolling, as a result, is more and more adopted on highways throughout the world, where various detection and payment technologies are used to make collection effective and accurate.
emovis is one such company that has developed various smart toll collection and payment schemes. “We are committed to finding solutions to the mobility challenges of the future. With a forward-thinking strategy, we lead on innovation in the digitalization of road payment methods and mobility solutions through the implementation of free flow toll projects in numerous countries,” said Benoît Rossi, Head of Corporate Communication at emovis.
The solutions that emovis provides include cash-less, barrier-free, roadside tolling using a combination of laser, RFID, video imaging treatment and thermal cameras to track and charge travelling vehicles; pay-by-plate solution using a combination of optical character recognition (OCR) combined with AI learning software to constantly improve the automated car recognition performances; satellite-based pay-per-kilometer solution allowing to record and charge the motorists according to the actual distance travelled on certain roads while ensuring full privacy; cloud-based interoperability platform allowing seamless travel across multiple tolled infrastructures with a single tag; and electronic payment back office covering multiple payment modes (credit cards, debit cards and so on) with full PCI/DESS compliance.
The company has participated in various projects including tolling on the U.K.’s Mersey Gateway Bridge, whereby emovis used a solution that combines loops and laser detection to trigger both front and rear license plate reading, as well as thermal imaging and laser for classification and vehicle count for auditing purposes.
Also, in October, emovis completed the end-to-end upgrade of Concession A25’s all-electronic tolling (AET) system, which operates on a strategic highway corridor in the Montreal metropolitan area of Canada. The tolling system on Canada’s A25 operates on the Olivier Charbonneau Bridge and uses an RFID transponder, with video-based tolling for vehicles without a toll tag.
Traffic management
The company has also made strides in the areas of traffic management. “Abertis, our parent company, recently signed a worldwide agreement to join the Connected Citizens Program run by Google-owned navigation service Waze. Waze's Connected Citizens Program, with more than 250 partners in the world, brings together public and private entities worldwide to accumulate traffic information in real time in order to ease congestion, enable drivers to make better decisions and improve road safety,” Rossi said. “The two-way data share partnership will enable both users of the Waze application and the Abertis Group's concessionaires to supply and receive traffic information via the app and other means. This exchange of data will enable users to get detailed information about traffic conditions in real time. We will leverage our partnership with Waze to build up real-time traffic information to improve traffic flows, reduce traffic congestion and enhance road safety.”
Meanwhile, emovis has leveraged the power of artificial intelligence to make traffic management even more efficient. “emovis is using advancements in AI, deep learning and big data analytics to implement mobility solutions that reduce congestion and make roads safer. For example, information from connected vehicles and intelligent road infrastructure presents opportunities to radically improve traffic management by predicting future demand. Dynamic traffic management uses predicted and live traffic-density data to create temporary lanes and even reverse the direction of lanes to alleviate congestion during peak traffic periods. Video analysis software, developed using AI techniques, can process images from road cameras to quickly pinpoint collisions and dispatch emergency services. Faster responses by emergency services translate into safety,” Rossi said.