Skip to main content

Siemens supplies toll system to France

Siemens has received orders, valued at nearly US$63 million from Eurotoll and Total, two of the largest French electronic toll onboard units issuers, to supply technology for the new French toll collection system. The equipment comprises onboard units for the vehicles as well as the electronic detection system. The orders are part of the Ecotaxe project which will see the introduction of mileage-based taxation on French national roads for trucks weighing 3.5 tons and more. In addition to the highways, bridg
May 30, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
1134 Siemens has received orders, valued at nearly US$63 million from 5812 Eurotoll and Total, two of the largest French electronic toll onboard units issuers, to supply technology for the new French toll collection system. The equipment comprises onboard units for the vehicles as well as the electronic detection system. The orders are part of the Ecotaxe project which will see the introduction of mileage-based taxation on French national roads for trucks weighing 3.5 tons and more.

In addition to the highways, bridges and tunnels already subject to toll payments, France plans to introduce a toll for the use of national roads and some country roads for trucks weighing 3.5 tons and more starting in mid-2013.

The monitored road network comprises about 10,000 kilometres. In contrast to conventional microwave systems, satellite-based tolling systems directly detect the position of the vehicles via the onboard units by using GPS satellite signals which are encrypted and transferred by GSM mobile telephony to the control centre for further processing. This satellitebased technology is therefore especially suitable for extensive road networks beyond the scope of the highways.

Siemens already developed and supplied an area-wide satellite-based toll collection system for Slovakia in 2010 and completed other toll projects, such as in London, Tel Aviv and the Seattle region in the US state of Washington.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Paris traffic management for PTV
    September 25, 2023
    The Paris region highway authority has adopted PTV technology, including PTV Flows, to enhance traffic management such as live traffic updates.
  • Underground expansion pushes tunnelling market
    June 13, 2012
    Infrastructure investment means that the road tunnel construction sector is healthy due to demand for new links – Mike Woof reports With many emergent nations investing heavily in infrastructure, the tunnelling sector is seeing extensive business at present. Tunnels provide key links in mountainous areas or in congested cities where building roads on the surface may not be practical. In Asia and Latin America, many key road connections are now being built underground to pass challenging terrain or provide
  • Current technologies could eliminate 90 per cent of traffic accidents
    April 27, 2012
    Nearly every traffic accident caused by driver error – up to 90 per cent of all crashes – could be eliminated if existing intelligent transportation technologies were implemented in vehicles and on roads, say experts at IEEE, the world's largest technical professional association. These include electronics and computing technologies such as in-vehicle machine vision and sensors to detect drowsy drivers, lane departure warning systems, and vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications for s
  • Major highway growth in Portugal
    February 14, 2012
    Twenty years ago Portugal was bottom of the European league in terms of roads and safety. A series of ambitious plans has seen the country rise to the top. Patrick Smith reports on how this was achieved