Project News: RCI trucks to test interoperable tolling in Europe

Date: 30 November 2007

On 18 February the European project RCI will begin a major demonstration of interoperable road charging across Europe.

The ERTICO – ITS Europe-coordinated Road Charging Interoperability (RCI) project will launch its operational trials on 18 February 2008 when two trucks leave Paris for a European tour.

Tolling and road charging have become major topics in discussions on ITS, and road transport technologies is a strategic market in which various stakeholders have distinct interest. Road charging interoperability links all interests and RCI is the European project that demonstrates a consensus-based concept for interoperability in practice in six existing road charging schemes in Europe.

Why interoperable charging
Several Member States and operators are currently going through complex processes to work towards new solutions for local road charging schemes. The European Commission (EC) has been working on the legal framework that creates the conditions for a further reduction in the number of devices that people need to pass between one tolling scheme and another (in April 2004, the significant directive 2004/52/EC on tolling interoperability was adopted). Operators continue to monitor and steer developments to protect investments made in toll infrastructure, while suppliers are trying to improve the conditions for a mass market. Toll service providers intend to secure and possibly extend the business case of toll service provisioning. The service user (the truck or car driver), although not actively involved, has an interest in industrial investments in cost optimisations and a lower price per unit.

The advent of interoperable solutions will avoid the need for multiple boxes in one vehicle. This enables policy makers to better predict and control the costs of implementation, operation, maintenance and future updates of national road user charging schemes; it also creates conditions for a mass market for suppliers, enabling them to further invest in cost optimisations and a lower price per unit. And it allows the toll service providers to secure and possibly extend the business case of toll service provisioning.

RCI proof of concept with respect to real market needs
The RCI project finalised and published the architecture and specifications for interoperable tolling, DSRC and GNSS-based, in Europe. This architecture was endorsed by the EC on 28 February 2007.

The RCI architecture is the result of consensus among 26 European partners including the tolling operators, toll service providers, a truck manufacturer and suppliers from the foundation of European road charging. RCI architecture builds upon the roles and responsibilities as defined by the European operator community (ASECAP) and Member States (Stockholm Group) in the CESARE III project. It extends this contractual and procedural model with the matching functional blocks and interfaces that have been derived from CEN/ISO work (such as 17575 and 15509).

RCI will not replace standardisation work, but is helping to advance and accelerate standardisation by means of validation of the standards in practice through demonstrations in six existing schemes in Europe. The validation of interoperable solutions against the interest of operators in existing markets makes RCI a unique and crucial activity in Europe for advancing the deployment of interoperable solutions.

RCI operational demonstrations in six existing tolling contexts
Two trucks equipped with interoperable RCI prototypes will leave Ponthevrard in France on 18 February 2008, and using the French TIS-PL toll service will head for Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Austria.

The transaction data that is generated will be collected to demonstrate that the on-board equipment is fully functional on the various networks and can seamlessly cross logical or national borders without any user interaction and without the need to be re-configured.

The route is defined to provide the most efficient use of the partners’ network and to generate as many transactions and interoperability test cases as possible within two weeks.

In France, the trial will show for the first time equipment that is compliant to the new European standard for short range microware (DSRC) communication (EN 15509) in the existing TIS-PL scheme. When the truck crosses the Swiss border, the prototype will without any user intervention identify it has moved into another context, adapt its behaviour and generate the distance-based charging data that is required by Swiss Customs. Going from Switzerland into Germany the prototypes have to close the set of charging data records generated in Switzerland and seamlessly start detecting when the truck makes use of road sections that are defined by the German Ministry.

One RCI prototype will even use the Toll Collect location support beacons for a better performance. Leaving Germany, the prototype will close its set of charge data records for Toll Collect and be ready for communication with the Austrian DSRC beacons; again fully compliant with the new European standard EN 15509. Via Switzerland again, the truck will enter Italy where the prototypes will communicate according to the Directive 2004/52 in UNI with the Telepass beacons. Via France the truck will go to Spain where the DSRC tag will be activated to exchange the charging data on the basis of the EN 15509 standard. The trucks will take all relevant border crossings in both directions.

It was agreed beforehand with all six toll chargers to use a defined set of relevant attributes and keys that allow for the personalisation of the in-vehicle equipment. This demonstration will be the first time that the one box, one contract and minimum invoice concept is going to be demonstrated in Europe.

For more information, please contact ERTICO Project Manager Oene Kerstjens or visit the RCI website at www.ertico.com/rci