Toll Collection System Research Articles

Information fusion based interference solution in electronic toll collection system

Traditional solutions deal with following-car interference and adjacent-lane interference in Electronic Toll Collection(ETC) system separately,and are of low efficiency and high cost.In order to solve this problem,a solution based on information fusion,which can deal with these two problems together,was proposed.This method used the vehicle information collected by an ETC system as known information and chose the features of the vehicle image to verify whether the vehicle information came from the car in question.Then D-S evidence theory was adopted to fuse the results of verification and make a final decision whether it was the right car to be charged.An improved method for D-S evidence theory was proposed to ensure its validity when the results of consistency verification conflicted with each other.The experimental results show that this method can highly reliably detect illegal vehicles and solve both following-car interference and adjacent lane interference problems in ETC system.

Freeway passenger car drivers' travel choice behaviour in a distance-based toll system

At present, Taiwan's freeways adopt frequency-based toll collection mechanism, and the distances between toll stations are about the same. The current toll mechanism cannot differentiate the actual distances travelled by freeway users. To fulfil the purpose of fairness and equity, distance-based toll collection will be put into practice in 2013. It is, therefore, interesting to study the effects of toll rates on passenger car drivers' travel choice behaviour, including departure time and route. Samples are further segmented by trip lengths into short, medium and long distances, respectively. Mixed logit models, which take individual heterogeneity into account, are estimated and the results find that travel time is an important variable influencing the choice of travel behaviour in the long distance model. Other significant variables include choice inertia, frequency of freeway use, time of freeway use, trip purpose, whether drivers pass toll plaza, toll rate, etc. The signs of the estimated parameters all fit prior knowledge and are statistically significant. The results also show the toll revenue for different scenario is less than the toll fee in the original per-entry-based toll collection system, indicating that these results are in line with the government’s commitment. In the future, if the distance-based system results in differential pricing, this study’s findings may serve as a reference.

Development of Recurrent Neural Network Considering Temporal‐Spatial Input Dynamics for Freeway Travel Time Modeling

Abstract: The artificial neural network (ANN) is one advance approach to freeway travel time prediction. Various studies using different inputs have come to no consensus on the effects of input selections. In addition, very little discussion has been made on the temporal–spatial aspect of the ANN travel time prediction process. In this study, we employ an ANN ensemble technique to analyze the effects of various input settings on the ANN prediction performances. Volume, occupancy, and speed are used as inputs to predict travel times. The predictions are then compared against the travel times collected from the toll collection system in Houston. The results show speed or occupancy measured at the segment of interest may be used as sole input to produce acceptable predictions, but all three variables together tend to yield the best prediction results. The inclusion of inputs from both upstream and downstream segments is statistically better than using only the inputs from current segment. It also appears that the magnitude of prevailing segment travel time can be used as a guideline to set up temporal input delays for better prediction accuracies. The evaluation of spatiotemporal input interactions reveals that past information on downstream and current segments is useful in improving prediction accuracy whereas past inputs from the upstream location do not provide as much constructive information. Finally, a variant of the state‐space model (SSNN), namely time‐delayed state‐space neural network (TDSSNN), is proposed and compared against other popular ANN models. The comparison shows that the TDSSNN outperforms other networks and remains very comparable with the SSNN. Future research is needed to analyze TDSSNN's ability in corridor prediction settings.

A Novel Parallel-Series Feeding Network Based on Three-Way Power Divider for Microstrip Antenna Array

A novel parallel-series feeding network for microstrip antenna arrays has been presented. A three-way power divider is utilized to connect the subarrays with the series-fed transmission lines. The proposed power divider is composed of seven transmission lines with different characteristic impedances and two isolation resistors. By changing the characteristic impedance of the transmission lines, the power division ratio can be adjusted. Meanwhile, good match and reasonable isolation performance can be obtained simultaneously. The proposed approach has been verified experimentally by using a 20-unit road side unit (RSU) antenna array operating at 5.815 GHz frequency range for a electronic toll collection (ETC) system. The proposed feeding network can be simply implemented on a single-layer substrate.

Effects of ETC Service Failure and Recovery Strategies on Freeway Drivers’ Satisfaction

In Taiwan, a distance-based electronic toll collection (ETC) system will be implemented to replace the manual collection of freeway tolls at tollbooths. For improving the service satisfaction and increasing the usage rate of the ETC, this study discusses the effects of service recovery after ETC service failure on drivers’ satisfaction and usage intention. The critical incident technique (CIT) is applied to explore incidents of service failure and service recovery in relation to ETC. Statistical methods are used to discuss the intentions and preferences of drivers for service recovery via scenarios. A survey conducted using a questionnaire designed through the stated preference approach is utilized to investigate Western Taiwan freeway corridor users. The analytical results should assist the responsible managerial and operational agencies to develop better marketing strategies enhancing the usage rate of the ETC system.

Automated Toll Collection System Using RFID

ATCS is an Automated Toll Collection System used for collecting tax automatically. In this we do the identification with the help of radio frequency. A vehicle will hold an RFID tag. This tag is nothing but unique identification number assigned. This will be assigned by RTO or traffic governing authority. In accordance with this number we will store, all basic information as well as the amount he has paid in advance for the TOLL collection. Reader will be strategically placed at toll collection center. Whenever the vehicle passes the toll naka, the tax amount will be deducted from his prepaid balance. New balance will be updated. Incase if one has insufficient balance, his updated balance will be negative one. To tackle this problem, we are alarming a sound, which will alert the authority that this vehicle doesn't have sufficient balance and that particular vehicle can be trapped. As vehicles don't have to stop in a queue, it assures time saving, fuel conservation and also contributing in saving of money.

Freeway drivers’ willingness to pay for an on board unit under an electronic toll collection system

Electronic toll collection (ETC) systems have been put into practice in one or two channels at toll plazas on Taiwan’s freeways since 2006. The utilisation of the ETC system has been flat due to the extra cost of installing the on board unit (OBU) that is used in the system. To increase the utilisation rate of the ETC system, it is crucial to understand the real price that drivers are willing to pay. Therefore, this study investigates freeway drivers’ willingness to pay a value for an OBU. A stated preference experiment is designed to obtain the willingness to pay at three different levels of use. To avoid the estimation bias due to a large percentage with a zero willingness to pay, a spike model is used. Different markets are segmented to examine their willingness to pay for an OBU. The estimation results show that the willingness to pay for an OBU is NT$727/unit1Note: 30.04NT$ was equivalent to $1 USD (October, 2011).1 for short distance drivers, NT$830 for medium distance drivers, and NT$1308/unit for long distance drivers.

Automatic Toll Collection System of Parking Based on Internet of Things

With cars increasing year by year, the problem of parking has become more and more serious. Easy, fast toll collection system is necessary in order to improve the efficiency of parking. In the paper, an automatic toll collection control system of parking was proposed. The internet of things was taken to finish the wireless communication among various devices and gateways in the parking. Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader was designed to realize the non-contact toll collection without stopping the car. The controller of the road gate handler was used to manage cars. And the parking fee can be automatically calculated according to the parking time and the card type for a driver by server. Physical simulation experiments were conducted and the experimental results show that the automatic toll collection system of parking can achieve good performance.

Research on a Map-matching Method for a GNSS-based ETC System

AbstractThis paper describes a new definition of a map on the on-board unit (OBU) side as well as a new map-matching method for a global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system. Key points and links are defined on a new map according to the highway design of an urban area in China in order to meet the needs of the GNSS-based ETC system. A new map-matching algorithm is proposed based on this map definition. The GPS search area changes with the running speed of the vehicle during the map-matching process. The proposed method first matches GPS data to the key nodes on the map instead of using links. Next, it matches the key exit, entry and passing links according to the charging status. Finally, it identifies the links by link property and adjacency relation to avoid interference from nearby vehicles. At the end of the paper, the performance of the proposed system in the experiment is evaluated, and other methods to improve the accuracy of map-matching are discussed.

고속도로 영업소의 자동 요금 징수 시스템 도입에 따른 소형 경유 화물트럭의 배출가스 저감 효과 분석

Electronic Toll Collection System (ETCS), so called "Hi-Pass" in Korea, has improved traffic flow at toll gate of highways. It is known that the improvement of traffic flow should reduce air pollutants and <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> from vehicles. In this study, real driving emission of a light duty truck with Portable Emission Measurement System(PEMS) has been measured to evaluate the emission reduction effect due to ETCS. The correlations between driving variables and emissions have been analyzed to verify its effect on traffic flow improvement and emission reduction at toll gate. We considered average vehicle speed, Relative Positive Acceleration (RPA), and the distance of queue as driving variables. Compared to passing Manual Toll Collection System (MTCS) lane without queue, ETCS was able to reduce 38.7% of <TEX>$NO_x$</TEX>, 21.6% of soot, and 27.7% of <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX>. The results showed that the higher the average vehicle speed, the lower RPA and no queue in ETCS contributed to the emission reductions. Linear equation models with RPA and queue have been established by the multiple linear regression method. The linear models resulted in the higher coefficient of determination than those with only average vehicle speed used for establishing vehicle emission factors.

Identifying important variables for predicting travel time of freeway with non-recurrent congestion with neural networks

The provision of long-distance travel time information has been a major factor facilitating the intelligent transportation system to become more successful. Previous studies have pointed out that non-recurrent congestion is the major cause of freeway delay. The long travel distance complicates the characteristics of traffic flow. Hence, how to improve the prediction capability of long-distance travel time in the case of non-recurrent congestion is an important issue that must be overcome in the field of travel time prediction. This study constructs the travel time prediction model for a segment of 36.1 kms (including eight interchanges) in the National Freeway No. 1, Taiwan, by using the multilayer perceptron. To improve the prediction capability of the model in the case of non-recurrent congestion, this study collects data of average spot speed and heavy vehicle volume gathered by dual-loop vehicle detectors, in addition to rainfall and temporal feature. Furthermore, the historical travel time inferred from the original data of electronic toll collection (ETC) system is also used as the input variable, and the actual travel time inferred from ETC is used as the training target to establish a robust prediction model. As suggested by the results of 168 experimental combinations, the most appropriate prediction model established in this study is a highly accurate forecasting model with MAPE of 6.47 %.

Embracing the new takes its toll

PurposeThe aim is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.Design/methodology/approachThe briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.FindingsWith hundreds of millions of vehicle journeys along the super highway in Taiwan, collecting tolls manually seemed an outdated process, delaying drivers who had to stop and queue at payment booths and requiring the hiring of a considerable number of employees to collect the money. So it seemed common sense for the government to contract a private company to develop and operate an electronic toll collection system which would detect by infra‐red rays a device within the vehicle, automatically deducting the charge from a pre‐paid card that drivers could buy at service stations. Drivers would incur the initial cost of buying and installing the onboard unit and buying their value‐storage card but had the benefit of never again having to stop and wait at tollgates or having to have small change handy.Practical implicationsThe article provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.Social implicationsThe article provides strategic insights and practical thinking that can have a broader social impact.Originality/valueThe briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

Development of CO2 Emission Estimating Methodology of Electronic Toll Collection System Based on Instantaneous Speed and Acceleration

Development of CO2 Emission Estimating Methodology of Electronic Toll Collection System Based on Instantaneous Speed and Acceleration

Analysis and Design of the Electronic Toll Collection System of Expressway Based on RFID

In order to speed up the vehicles through the expressway toll station and reduce traffic congestion, we analysed of the No-waiting ETC(Electronic Toll Collection System) of expressway unifying the ETC theory and the RFID(Radio Frequency Identification Devices) technology. Firstly, we analysed system's hierarchy architecture, then detailed analysed the basic component of system, and designed the workflow and composing of functional modules, finally, established the model of ETC system of expressway based on RFID, it provides more practical guidance scheme for expressway ETC system.

A Benefit-Cost Analysis of Road Pricing in Downtown Seattle

This benefit-cost analysis evaluates the key benefits and costs associated with potential cordon-based road pricing in downtown Seattle to determine if this road pricing option will be beneficial for the region. The accrued benefits quantified in this analysis are (1) reduced travel time, (2) increased travel reliability, (3) reduced emissions, and (4) reduced traffic accidents. On the cost side, the study measures (1) capital and operation costs of the toll collection system, (2) additional subsidy for transit agencies to meet higher demand, and (3) both direct and indirect financing costs. The toll revenues from road pricing and changes in other government revenues such as gas tax are neutral for the society as a whole, because they represent cash transfer between government and residents and do not cause adverse impacts on social welfare unless the toll rates are dramatically high. The results over a thirty-year period show that there will be net benefits of 585 million dollars in present value for the region in the base scenario. The extensive sensitivity and uncertainty analysis also demonstrate that the project will remain favorable in conservative scenarios. The study qualitatively examines possible impacts on other factors such as retail sales and land use but concludes that they are unlikely to undermine the key results in this analysis. These findings suggest that in sum, road pricing in downtown Seattle would have positive impacts for the city and region.

혼합군집분석 기법을 이용한 도로 교통량의 첨두율 산정

하루 동안 발생하는 교통수요는 대부분 특정 시간대에 집중됨으로써 수요 및 편익 산정에 어려움을 초래한다. 따라서 보다 신뢰성 높은 결과를 산출하기 위해서는 시간대별 특성을 고려할 필요가 있다. 이를 위한 첨두/비첨두의 1시간 통행량으로 환산하는 방법으로는 직관적 방법, 경험적 방법, 통계적 방법 등이 있다. 본 연구에서는 통계적 방법의 일환인 혼합군집분석 기법을 적용하여 첨두/비첨두/심야시간에 대한 지속시간과 집중률을 산정한다. 한국건설기술연구원이 제공하는 2009년 전국 24시간 수시교통량 자료를 이용하였으며, 차종별 특성을 살펴보기 위해 승용차, 트럭, 전차종 등으로 나누어 분석을 실시하였다. 분석결과의 검증을 위해 한국도로공사의 TCS 통행시간 자료를 이용하였다. 검증결과 본 연구결과가 타 연구에 비해 비첨두/심야 시간에는 오차율이 낮으며, 첨두시에는 통행거리가 멀어질수록 오차율이 높아지는 결과를 보였다. 본 연구결과는 임의성을 배제할 수 있으며, 첨두율 추정치에 대한 신뢰성 검증을 수행할 수 있어 보다 안정적인 방법론이라 평가할 수 있을 것이다. 본 연구의 결과가 향후 교통수요 분석의 신뢰성 향상에 일조할 수 있기를 기대한다. The majority of daily travel demands concentrate at particular time-periods, which causes the difficulties in the travel demand analysis and the corresponding benefit estimation. Thus, it is necessary to consider time-specific traffic characteristics to yield more reliable results. Traditionally, na<TEX>$\ddot{i}$</TEX>ve, heuristic, and statistical approaches have been applied to address the peak-hour ratio. In this study, a hybrid clustering model which is one of the statistical methods is applied to calculate the peak-hour ratio and its duration. The 2009 national 24-hour traffic data provided by the Korea institute of Construction Technology are used. The analysis is conducted dividing vehicle types into passenger cars and trucks. For the verification for the usefulness of the methodology, the toll collection system data by the Korea Express Corporation are collected. The result of the research shows lower errors during the off-peak hours and night times and increasing error ratios as the travel distance increases. Since the method proposed can reduce the arbitrariness of analysts and can accommodate the statistical significance test, the model could be considered as a more robust and stable methodology. It is hoped that the result of this paper could contribute to the enhancement of the reliability for the travel demand analysis.

Development of a Model for Electronic Toll-Collection System

The paper presents a new method for electronic toll collection system and to match car number plate detection system. The electronic toll collection system (ETS) has been fabricated based on microcontroller. Here a system is developed to collect tolls according to the weight of the vehicle. The car number plate detection method utilizes template matching technique to approximate the location of car number plate. Then, using this output from the template matching method, color information is used to eliminate the unwanted color areas from the approximate number plate region without affecting the correct color regions. Hence, the number plate region can be determined more accurately. This work can easily be done by image processing system using MATLAB. The method has low complexity and reduced the processing time magnificently. This automated system also shows a better performance in highway traffic management. This paper shows the gateway to fabricate a highly automated toll-plaza. The purpose of this paper is to collect toll according to the weight of the vehicles and to build a real time application which recognizes license plates from cars at a gate, for example at the entrance of a parking area. The system, based on regular PC with video camera, catches video frames which include a visible car license plate and processes them. Once a license plate is detected, its digits are recognized, displayed on the User Interface or checked against a database. The focus is on the design of algorithms used for extracting the license plate from a single image, isolating the characters of the plate and identifying the individual characters. Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) is a technology that allows for electronic payment of tolls. The endeavor of our work was to develop a highly automated toll-collection system. The automated system classifies (1) a vehicle based on its load range. In recent world, while collecting tolls in the bridges/ tunnels there may arise various problems such as: lengthy process for money transactions, which leads long traffic congestion as well. Here in Bangladesh the toll collection system is not developed. Moreover, it is time consuming and not accurate. The overloaded vehicles give the same amount of toll like the unloaded one though the overloaded vehicles damage the bridge more than that of the unloaded one. In some cases the vehicles carry a huge amount of load which crosses the legal limit. Moreover, corruption is also a major problem here. This is why; such a toll collection system is fabricated here. This toll-collection system is designed for achieving a fraud free and completely auditable operation by accurately detecting and registering vehicle movements and toll collector's activities. A central control system is introduced here for online monitoring of the tool-plaza. A pressure sensor is used to measure the weight of the vehicles which gives analogous data to the microcontroller. The microcontroller takes the data from the pressure sensor and gives the output data as a unit of currency. A system is also introduced here to control the barricade with the micro controller (2). Whenever the load of the vehicle is measured then the toll is collected and then the barricade is opened. It just takes a few moments and by doing this a better traffic management is also confirmed as well as the accurate measurement of the load of the vehicle. The objectives of image processing based electronic toll collection are many. It gives an accurate data as well as saves the license plate of the vehicles to recognize any unwanted vehicle.

Benefits of freeway investment through innovative procurement

South Africa’s pressing development challenges include an ageing road network and sharp growth in road traffic. The construction of adequate transport infrastructure, and the capital investment required to fund it sustainably, are prerequisites for social and economic development. Furthermore, there is a legal and moral obligation to spread the economic benefits of such investment to smaller firms and historically disadvantaged South Africans. In 2008, the South African National Roads Agency Ltd launched the Gauteng freeway improvement project, covering 560 km of roads. The first 185 km of roads include the construction of additional lanes, reconfiguring interchanges and the introduction of a multi-lane free flow electronic toll collection system, all to be financed through capital borrowings and toll income. This paper will discuss innovations in the procurement of the civil works that enabled the involvement of firms owned by black South Africans and prevented the consolidation of large firms in joint ventures.

다차선 서비스를 제공하는 자동요금징수시스템을 위한 RFID 기반 SME 알고리즘

현재 고속도로 Tollgate의 단 차선에 성공적으로 시범설치 운영되고 있는 자동 요금 징수 시스템을 다차선에 서비스하기 위해 단거리 전용 통신 중 RF-DSRC 무선 통신 기술을 활용하고자 하였다. 본 논문에서는 RF-DSRC 통신의 기술적인 문제점을 해결하기 위해 데이터 흐름 및 형식을 RFID 통신 기술에 접목한 새로운 SME 알고리즘을 제안하였다. 또한 본 논문에서 제시하는 SME 알고리즘의 평가를 위하여 자동 요금 징수 시스템과 900Mhz RFID를 기반으로 실험을 수행하였다. RFID의 속도별 인식 실험과 RFID 내 정보 인식 정확성 실험 결과로 70Km/h 미만의 속도까지 RFID를 인식하고 90%이상의 인식 정확성을 갖는 것을 알 수 있다. In order for the support of the ETCS (Electronic Toll Collection System) model, which have been operated successfully till now, with multi-lane service, the wireless communication system of the multi-lane-supported ETCS based on RF-DSRC (Radio Frequency - Dedicated Short Range Communication) was used. In this paper, the SME algorithm attaching data flow and form into RFID communication technology was newly suggested to overcome technical problems on RF-DSRC communication system. In addition, in order to verify the SME algorithm, experiments based on ETCS and 900Mhz RFID were carried out. From the result of realization experiment of RFID dependent on the velocity and precision experiment of information inside of RFID, we can see that RFID is detected below 70Km/h and the precision of estimation is more than 90%.

An Open Traffic Light Control Model for Reducing Vehicles' $\hbox{CO}_{2}$ Emissions Based on ETC Vehicles

Usually, vehicles' stop-and-go driving will consume more fuel and emit more CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> than constant speed driving. To reduce vehicles' CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> emissions, vehicles' travel should be smoothed by reducing the stop-and-go times. In this paper, a three-tier structure is proposed to realize dynamic traffic light control for smoothing vehicles' travel. In tier-1, an electronic toll collection (ETC) system is employed for collecting road traffic flow data and calculating the recommended speed. In tier-2, radio antennas are installed near the traffic lights. Road traffic flow information can be obtained by wireless communication between the antennas and ETC devices. In tier-3, a branch-and-bound-based real-time traffic light control algorithm is designed to smooth vehicles' travels. After smoothing vehicles' travels, more vehicles can pass intersections with less waiting time and fewer short-time stops; therefore, the vehicles' CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> emissions can be reduced. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme performs much better than the adaptive fuzzy traffic light control method: The average waiting time, short-time stop times, and CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> emissions are greatly reduced, and the nonstop passing rate is greatly improved.