Brazil to have compulsory toll tags by July 2014 (SINIAV)

In the past week, Austrian-based toll system supplier Kapsch published a press release announcing it had won a contract to supply tags to Brazil.

Not particularly significant for anyone beyond Kapsch on first appearance, but in fact it is something a little different from simply supplying tags for a toll road. The press release alludes to Brazil's programme for a national compulsory electronic vehicle ID system that, in effect, means all vehicles in Brazil having what is equivalent to DSRC based toll tags.

The press release states:

SINIAV (Sistema Nacional de Identificação Automática de Veículos) is organized by the Ministry of the Cities (MC) and the National Traffic Committee (CONTRAN) in Brazil and foresees the mandatory electronic registration for all vehicles in the country, including passenger cars, trucks and motorbikes. 

All very well, and let me be very clear.  The press release does not claim Kapsch is the supplier of tags for all vehicles in Brazil or even part of them, but it also does not link them to toll roads, so the impression is that Kapsch is at least a partial supplier of tags for vehicles in Brazil.

So what is SINIAV about? Well the allegedly official website for the programme (it was on the Kapsch press release but I am unconvinced given the content on the website) has rather limited information.   I am unconvinced that the site is official because it contains language (admittedly in Portuguese) that raises some of the privacy concerns around the system.
 

It claims:

The SINIAV tag will include data on the number of the chip, board, chassis and vehicle identifier (registration number). 

The programme was authorised by law in 2006 with the primary motivation being to address vehicle related crime, a secondary one to help in fleet management of commercial vehicles It also claims that the system will mean the “end of auto theft” because the Police will be able to identify through triangulation the location of the vehicle (presumably the Police will be “polling” vehicles constantly for a particular ID or will have fixed transceiver stations to “poll” passing vehicles). 

The website from the Federal Transport Ministry indicates that the tags can be passive or active RFID, indicating either a basic sticker tag or a more sophisticated "beeping, lights" type unit being available.

A lot more useful information came from a presentation at an IBTTA conference in 2011 by Dario Sassi Thober of the Wernhervon Braun Center for Advanced Research.  The Wernhervon Braun Center appears to have been contracted to develop security and data protocols and design for the standards used for SINIAV.   The key points from Thober's presentation are:

- SINIAV is linked to state and national vehicle databases, as it is states that manage vehicle registration, but the national agency DENATRAN manages the exchange of such data. The system is designed to be seamless with the creation (and presumably change and destruction) of vehicle number plates.   It will facilitate states requesting data about vehicle owners related to traffic and criminal law enforcement.

- SINIAV is also intended to provide a platform for electronic free flow tolling across Brazil, reducing and ultimately eliminating the need for manual tolls and automatic number plate recognition systems.  This will greatly facilitate more tolling and ease the difficulties in implementing urban congestion charging in cities such as Sao Paulo;

- 30 June 2014 is the deadline for all vehicles to have tags installed, including motorcycles.  The SINIAV website suggests that by the end of August 2013 all new vehicles sold in Brazil will have to be equipped.

- SINIAV has a centralised national back office retaining data not only of vehicles but also violations and other irregular activities which may be legal or financially related (e.g. tax or debts). Thober’s presentation has a good representation of the data flows for the initiation of a vehicle into the system.

Related to SINIAV are two other programmes.  

One called Brasil-ID will use SINIAV technology for cargo tracking, both based on the vehicle and on the cargo itself (by attaching RFID tags to containers and pallets). Brasil-ID is about truck cargo identification, tracking and authentication, and appears to be related to tracking goods for tax compliance purposes (e.g tariffs or local sales taxes) and deterring theft of cargo. 

The other is called SINRAV and includes GPS and GPRS systems to enable real time vehicle tracking.  This would theoretically allow for nationwide distance based tolling (VMT), but is currently subject to judicial review in the federal courts for fear of privacy infringements.   SINRAV appears to be a far longer term programme as it involves more expensive equipment on board vehicles, although it would be necessary to deliver the promise of seriously addressing vehicle theft.

Conclusion

Brazil is adopting an ambition programme that will make it ever easier to introduce tolling on major highways and urban congestion pricing, but it is driven by security.  The one thing SINIAV will do is make it difficult to swap number plates and raise the level of sophistication needed to change vehicle ID, essentially putting out of business a lot of petty theft of vehicles and leaving it to the serious professional vehicle thieves who can afford to spend serious money on replicating SINIAV tags to fool Police checks.

The bigger question is whether such electronic identification of vehicles, which seems like it would be the norm nowadays, could easily be rolled out in developed countries without privacy fears essentially halting it.  Meanwhile, identifying vehicles by a set of letters and numbers on a plate that needs to be visually read looks increasingly anachronistic.  Having that information recorded electronically makes sense, but what matters is how to link that data to the essential vehicle owner information and to protect that.  

SINIAV obviously will be useful in addressing vehicle theft, but could also be used for traffic infringement enforcement (e.g. speeding and traffic signals).  However, its limitations for tolling are essentially the extent to which roadside infrastructure exists to detect vehicles passing certain points on the network.

The logistics of the Brazilian programme are considerable, and I would bet it will be some years before all vehicles are caught.  Just because SINIAV will be compulsory does not mean that it will be universal, and I suspect a good 5-10% of all vehicles are likely to be outside the system for some time, unless Police are incentivised to identify, persuade and compel the outliers to join.

If anyone who is part of the SINIAV programme has anything to add, please feel free to contact me as I am happy to clarify or add more information as it comes available.

News briefs: France, Philippines, Romania

France

A press release from Kapsch reports that the company has won a contract to supply on board units for French heavy vehicle "ecotaxe" system for more than 25 million Euros.  Kapsch is known for its experience with DSRC (tag and beacon) tolls in Austria, the Czech Republic and elsewhere.  Now it has moved into the GNSS (GPS) domain of tolls involving distance measurement.  I remember a few years ago a rather inane debate at a conference between a Kapsch representative (arguing against GNSS tolling) and a Toll Collect representative arguing about the "best technology", when the real answer is "depends on what you are doing and where you are doing it".  It is good to see that Kapsch is no longer beholden to DSRC alone.

This puts the Austrian Kapsch in the centre of French heavy vehicle tolls, and provides a platform to build a wider business in satellite enabled tolling, without roadside gantries to measure distance.

Philippines

Manila Bulletin reports that private infrastructure investment firm, Citra Metro Manila Tollways Corp, has proposed a 14 km elevated toll road from Buendia in Makati City to Balintawak in Quezon City in metropolitan Manila. It would be six lanes and is called the SMC-Citra alignment.

Predicted travel time savings are over an hour at peak time, as the current journey time on surface streets can be up to 1.5 hours. The cost is estimated at US$594 million, and is expected to be a fully commercial toll road (entirely funded from tolls).

Romania

Romania Business Insider reports that Romania's 2011-2020 National Road Safety Strategy happens to mention inclusion of a "congestion tax", reflecting the Energy Strategy for the Bucharest Municipality.  The report also notes that Romania had an 86.4% increase in newly registered cars in the month of January 2012 compared to the same month in 2011, meaning Romanians are buying new cars in increasing numbers.  Now this report doesn't say when or how congestion charging might be introduced in Bucharest, yet it is notable that growth in car ownership and traffic in this former totalitarian state is giving rise to consideration of the need for demand management measures to address congestion and pollution.

Belarus to introduce national highway toll system

The Republic of Belarus is rarely in the news. Often referred to as the last dictatorship in Europe, it is closely aligned with Russia, having once been a republic of the USSR and has been led, since independence, by a strongman Alexander Lukashenko. The state and the economy is largely run on a version of the Soviet model, with most industries government owned and political debate in the media subject to constraints. So to read the news that it is looking to impose a user pays toll system across its highway network is curious at least.

The news originally came from a news report about Austrian toll equipment supplier Kapsch, which reported that it had won a contract worth €267m to install and operate tolls on 2,743km of roads using DSRC technology (commonly referred to as “tag and beacon”). It includes operation of the system for 20 years. The system will be fully electronic free flow, which of course can present issues in some countries regarding pursuit of violators. However, Belarus has tight border control so can easily enforce against foreigners, and presumably the rather strong state addresses that issue for its own nationals.   Curiously, opponents of GPS enabled distance tolls sometimes cite the system as "eye in the sky" or "big brother". One would have thought had this been useful, a state like Belarus would have implemented such a system to keep track of its citizens.  The DSRC system being implemented will only record vehicles passing certain points, and only on the national highways.   It will be useless in keeping track of vehicles in cities or rural areas.

The first phase of implementation is to come into effect by 1 July 2013 and will see Kapsch investing in the entire system and recovering the costs from the toll revenue. The toll will apply to all vehicles, except for “Customs Union” cars (which may be a reference to the Customs Union with Russia). It is not clear whether this means private cars of citizens in Belarus and Russia are exempt. If so, it will mean a significant number of vehicles will not be paying tolls.

Belarussian website, Telegraf reports that Belarus has one toll road now - M-1/E30 - Brest (Kozlavichy) - Minsk - Russian border (Radki).

Belarus's sole existing toll road

It is intended that all “first category” roads will become tollways, except the Minsk ring road. This makes sense as the purpose of urban ringways is to take traffic off of urban streets, and tolling will be more likely to divert traffic in that context.

Undoubtedly, this move is driven by Belarus’s geography as a transit point between Russia and the EU (and less so between “mainland” Russia and its enclave of Kaliningrad). Increasing truck and car traffic offers Belarus the chance to make some money from tolls. Nothing in the reports indicates what will be done with the revenue, beyond cost recovery, with no announcements of directing funding into highways or the like. However, the proposed network of tollways is very extensive indeed, so it will be interesting to watch developments.

For Kapsch to do business in Belarus is obviously a feat of effort, which I need not really explain further to those who know how Belarus works.  Having access to revenues for so many years will be worth a lot, but the warning for Kapsch is of course whether Belarus remains the state that it is.  If/when the current President is no longer in power, it may be contracts with the current regime are not worth much, indicating that Kapsch better get the capital value of its investment out of the system sooner rather than later.   With such a fast implementation programme for Kapsch, it will be out to demonstrate that it can do this efficiently and effectively, and hope that it proves to be an entree into the far larger market to the east of Belarus.   I look forward to reading further about proposed pricing, payment systems and enforcement approaches.