Skip to main content

FETC innovation from Highway Toll to ITS Taiwan smart city

FETC innovation from Highway Toll to ITS Taiwan smart city – a Global Road Achievement Award winner says IRF. The Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Company (FETC) has a bold vision for the future. FETC has achieved the most successful BOT project for ITS traf_ c management; it turns the traditional highway toll collection system into an integrated intelligent electronic toll collection (ETC) system for mobility management.
March 6, 2017 Read time: 3 mins
Intelligent highway toll collection technology developed for Taiwan offers potential for export across Europe and Asia
RSSFETC innovation from Highway Toll to ITS Taiwan smart city – a Global Road Achievement Award winner says IRF

The Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Company (FETC) has a bold vision for the future. FETC has achieved the most successful BOT project for ITS traffic management; it turns the traditional highway toll collection system into an integrated intelligent electronic toll collection (ETC) system for mobility management.

According to the 3918 IRF Washington’s prestigious GRAA Awards panel: “Free flow tolling presents significant advantages for all parties, and the technological solution introduced by FETC meets some of the highest performance standards industry-wide. FETC’s achievement is admired as an esteemed win-win case of a sustainable PPP model that satisfies the tripartite coalition of the government, the private sector, and the public.”

Specifically, FETC has created significant socio-economic contributions to Taiwan’s intelligent transportation arena. It has improved safety on highway for drivers – the rate of vehicle crashes has decreased by 14.7%. The saving on travelling time is estimated at 15% for a journey from Taipei to Kaohsiung (approximately 350km).

With approximately 1.5 million daily vehicle trips and an average saving of 15 minutes/ vehicle trip, the total savings of traffic time is estimated at 22.5 million minutes daily (corresponding to 42.8 years) and carbon savings of 572,000tonnes of CO2. This is the equivalent to the CO2 captured by 118 trees in New York’s Central Park.

The total savings amounts to over US$2 billion in economic and environmental value for the country. FETC’s ETC system is the first case in the world to comply with the ISO 18000-6C Open Standard RFID technology for a nationwide distance-based ETC system. It reduces manpower expenditures and offers many technical advantages, such as real-time and high volume transactions (approximately 15 million daily) — 10 times more than the previous system. Furthermore, the system affords the non-stop operation of complex three-stage variable-rate toll collections, with a toll collection accuracy rate exceeding 99.99% and a successful tolling rate of 99.97%, demonstrating the FETC systems’ robustness and superior quality assurance and control.

Douglas Hsu, chairman and CEO, Far Eastern Group (FEG) said, “We are honoured to present to other countries with the applications of RFID in ORT Smart tolling, Smart Traffic, Smart Payment and other Smart applications, as well as the experiences of the successful promotion and implementation of ETC under PPP framework cooperation with the government.”

The set of big data-accumulated 11.4 billion transactions since operations began can be used for the reduction of congestion on highway ramps, variable rate plans to divert heavy traffic flow, improvements in capacity utilisation, and the analysis of historical traffic data to warn future drivers of incidents.

FETC’s ETC system (eTag) has achieved a 94% usage rate and is becoming a fundamental infrastructure element enhancing Smart Cities through smart mobility IoT, and also includes Smart Parking, Intelligent Traffic Guidance, Intelligent Warning and Control, Smart Monitoring, Probing for Hazardous Areas, and Smart Payment.

FETC’s ETC system is duplicable in many ways: the system can be expanded countrywide to move Taiwan towards a Smart Island; it has been adopted by Vietnam and is in the process of negotiation for export to Eurasia countries (Kazakhstan, among others), which offers opportunities to the local industries to develop their exporting businesses.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • The 2016 Global Road Achievement Awards have been announced
    January 27, 2017
    The International Road Federation recently announced the winners of the 2016 IRF Global Road Achievement Awards at a ceremony held during the 2nd IRF Asia Regional Congress & Exhibition. This year, the IRF honours 12 projects from around the world, each leading the way in innovation across major road & highway disciplines. The selection was made by an international panel of senior road development specialists.
  • Information technology and transport development
    April 12, 2012
    A team of eminent Russian specialists* introduce exciting new information technologies, such as the Internet of Things, and foresee their promising applications in the field of transport infrastructure development. Global economic growth, combined with explosive digital technology proliferation, brings new challenges to the field of transport infrastructure. Technical advances such as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), vehicle to infrastructure interfaces, global positioning, electronic toll collecti
  • Information technology and transport development
    February 16, 2012
    A team of eminent Russian specialists* introduce exciting new information technologies, such as the Internet of Things, and foresee their promising applications in the field of transport infrastructure development
  • Key deals show strength of Tolling solutions sector
    September 26, 2013
    The world’s leading tolling solution providers have achieved significant deals in recent months emphasising the importance of their latest and proven technology. Guy Woodford reports Kapsch TrafficCom North America (Kapsch), part of Kapsch TrafficCom Group, has been awarded a five-year US$30 million contract by Canadian Tolling Company International (Cantoll). The contract will see the leading tolling technology manufacturer supply its next generation TDMA V6 Interior Transponder, also known as an onboar