Australia: Industry briefing of National Heavy Vehicle Charging Pilot Large Scale On-Road Trial Procurement

The Australian (Federal) Government's Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications has published a Notification of Industry Briefing, for its National Heavy Vehicle Charging Pilot.  The industry briefing will be held THIS FRIDAY 1 May from 0815-1030 Australian Eastern Standard Time (2215-0030 UTC/GMT 30 April-1 May) and then 1715-1930 the same day (0715-0930 UTC/GMT 1 May).  The first session is timed for Australian, New Zealand and North/South American interest, and the second one for Asian, European/African interest.

The text below is a verbatim extract directly from the notice:

The purpose of this industry brief is to provide information to, and obtain information from, potential tenderers for three planned solutions procurements for the National Heavy Vehicle Charging Pilot’s Large Scale On-Road Trial.

    Provision of telematics devices and services

    Provision of third-party invoicing services

    Provision of manual collection devices and reporting services

This briefing is not a procurement and does not form part of any Commonwealth procurement process. The Commonwealth will not select or exclude (from future participation in above procurements) any companies based on their attendance or non-attendance at the Industry Brief.

Following the Industry Briefing sessions, there will be a period in which the department will accept feedback submissions from industry on the proposed technical approaches to gathering data and generating invoices and mock permits.

The National Heavy Vehicle Charging Pilot (National Pilot) is an innovative industry partnership testing potential direct road user charging options for heavy vehicles. The Large Scale On-Road trial is anticipated to involve up to 100 participants providing more than 1000 vehicles across diverse industries and fleet sizes.  

Trial Participants will test several operational models for collecting and reporting distance travelled. Existing and charging-specific telematics systems will be tested, as well as non-telematics distance measurement technology (hubodometers).

No money will be collected from trial participants. Instead, the data collected will be used to generate mock invoices. The mock invoice will be used to calculate and compare alternate mass-distance and location-based charges with an estimation of annual registration and fuel-based road user charges (current PAYGO model) collected for each participant. 

END

Further details on the National Heavy Vehicle Charging Pilot are found on the Department's website. 

Disclaimer: D'Artagnan Pacific is technical advisor to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications

3M expands presence in toll equipment and systems supply market

The marketplace for manufacturing, installing and operating electronic tolling systems worldwide is quite fractionated.  This is due to the relatively isolated nature of electronic tolling systems as they have evolved in different markets.  Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States have all gone down various paths, some compatible, some not.  

As a result, the key players in that market vary according to where you are.  In Europe, companies such as Kapsch and Siemens are leaders.  In the US, Transcore is a key player.  So the news that 3M is to acquire Federal Signal Technologies Group (which focuses on electronic toll collection and parking management hardware and software services) indicates some confidence by a larger player in the potential for this market.  There being a reasonable likelihood that over the medium term, electronic toll conversions will keep this sector busy, certainly in developed countries, for the next decade or so, along with the likely growth of tolling being used to finance improvements to networks.

The toll system supply market still has some way to go to be completely mature (although in Europe it has consolidated considerably), and is dependent on larger players wanting to get into global markets (Kapsch has been notable in doing this with some alacrity).

Toll Roads News has a good article about the deal with links to the press releases from the two respective companies.

Q-Free optimistic about future

Norwegian toll road infrastructure provider Q-Free has been around since 1984 and is based in the city of Trondheim, where it provided the technology for that city’s toll system in 1988. It has since supplied systems for other Norwegian toll systems including Oslo’s toll ring (which is effectively a congestion pricing system today) and now has a global presence with 14 regional offices. It is fair to say that Q-Free is now one of the major European suppliers of roadside and in-vehicle tolling equipment and infrastructure.

The company (publicly listed in Oslo) has released its 2011 second quarter results which look not bad in these times of economic slowdown.
- US$34 million in revenues (19% up on same period in 2010)
- US$2.7 million in operating profit
- US$10 million in new orders
- US$85 million in backlog orders.

The written report on the Q2, 2011 results is available here.

Key activity (in the market, not necessarily what Q Free is doing) is seen in:

Single gantry for bi-directional road tolls

- Being selected as supplier for Gothenburg congestion charge in Sweden;
- Portugal (support for progress towards more electronic tolls);
- France (state highway truck tolling progressing, Q Free seeking role);
- Slovenia (government seeking proposals for truck tolls);
- South Africa (Q Free awarded contract for DSRC tags for SANRAL);
- Expectation of progress in network truck tolls for Belgium and Denmark.
- Congestion pricing in Indonesian cities;
- Toll system expansion and renewal in Taiwan (on main highways);
- Increased electronic tolling in Bangkok;

Single gantry for bi-directional tolls

- Australian toll road moves to more electronic toll takeup
- Brazil, Chile, Columbia and Ecuador all have potential, with high tag demand in Brazil;
- High US interest in automatic number plate recognition solutions.

The conclusion on the economic outlook for the toll infrastructure sector is one I have little argument with:

Single gantry for one way tolls

- The global Road User Charging market is expected to grow considerably over the next years because traffic is causing congestion problems implying environmental challenges and time inefficiency, the need for financing to build and maintain infrastructure is evident.

but.. political risk still plays a role in this industry, e.g. delays and/or cancellations although this is reduced over time as number of cases being explored are increasing and not at least due to the financial situation

Q-Free has highlighted what it claims is its unique single gantry multi-lane electronic free flow tolling solution using DSRC and ANPR technologies, the images come from the presentation which you can read in full here.