Volvo truck proposes building toll projects in Sweden

Volvo says it is prepared to invest in toll projects in Sweden for which there is motorist demand. The company's CEO Leif Johansson told the Gotesborgs-Posten newspaper this week that the company is prepared to raise the capital to build a number of major projects including:

- a toll bridge or tunnel at the Gota River

- highways in the Malardalen Valley which includes the capital Stockholm and an area to the west

- upgrade of the E20 Skovde to Gothenberg

- E45 Gothenburg to Trollhattan

Volvo would subject tollroads to the same profitability tests as any other investment, Johansson said. This is Volvo the independent truck and construction equipment maker, from which the car division was detached and sold to Ford several years ago.

No report on whether the Swedish government is interested in doing toll concessions.

Norway next door is full of tollroads, toll bridges and toll tunnels, a mix of private concessions and local government operations.

BACKGROUND:

But so far Sweden's major involvement in tolling has been the central Stockholm congestion toll system in a cordon around the heart of the capital, plus the binational Oresund bridge tunnel crossing of the narrow neck of the Baltic Sea between Copenhagen Denmark and Malmo Sweden - a successful business owned 50% by each country's national government.

Swedish industry has been prominent worldwide in electronic tolling however through Combitech, a spinoff of Philips, now part of Kapsch, which pioneered transponder tolling and use of machine vision or optical profiling. Combitech equipment was successfully used in the open road toll setting on Melbourne's City Link, and they were deeply involved in development of the 5.8GHz passive backscatter systems that became the European CEN-278, and also Australian and South American standards.

CREDIT: Thanks to a translator in Washington DC.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-03-23