BRAZIL Parsons Brinck pushes backscatter e-toll

BRAZIL

Parsons Brinck pushes backscatter e-toll

Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) in a report for the Brazilian toll concessionaires association (ABCR) has forcefully plugged adoption of California-Texas style backscatter electronic toll (ET) systems as an interim standard in Brazil and by implication elsewhere in South America.

“We recommend that the California Title 21 (T-21) standard be adopted for future procurements (next 2 to 5 years),” PB says. “For the second phase we recommend waiting for the current US and international standards setting and testing processes to provide answers to important system performance questions. The answers should be available in the next 2 to 3 years.”

The report funded by the US Trade and Development Agency could hardly have been expected to dwell on the possibility of Brazil adopting the European CEN-standard (which it manages hardly to mention) or Japan’s standard but its cursory treatment of the case for the active transponder technology favored by the authorities in Brazil’s largest state of Sao Paulo is surprising.

Sao Paulo state on March 31 1997 decreed the adoption of ASTMv6, an active standard for electronic toll collection and other vehicle-to-roadside radio communications. ASTMv6 was developed by Hughes TMS, now Raytheon Systems. It is the de facto standard in use in North America for heavy truck vehicle-to-roadside communications and the system used for toll collection on the 407-ETR toll road in Toronto. In addition the Inter Agency Group of north eastern states now operating the largest population of toll tags in North America use an active electronic toll technology with many of the characteristics of ASTMv6. Japan is adopting a variant of the ASTMv6 for tolling.

ASTMv6 was proposed a year ago as the US standard by the Federal Highway Administration but it backed off that following vigorous protests by backscatter system manufacturers.

PB in its report, which we are told may be revised following comments, suggests that California’s T-21 backscatter standard be adopted in systems being purchased in Brazil in the next several years. It also proposes that the new North American ASTMv7 (which allows for both backscatter and active) be adopted as such equipment comes available in several years time.

For now PB says bluntly that backscatter technology has the following advantages:

• less power consumption and longer battery life

• more precise read zones

• accurate communications at high speed

• more capably reads multiple tags

• effective in dirty and humid environment

• cheaper electronics

• greater robustness in combating RF noise via small bandwidth

These points would be vigorously disputed by manufacturers and users of active ET systems. However the report is good news for Amtech and Sirit the major manufacturers with product qualified as Title 21 compliant. Sirit a Canadian company last yeat bought the electronic tolling supplies business of Texas Instruments and has about 500,000 Title 21 toll tags in service, most of them in southern California, its major customers being the Transp Corridors Agency and 91-Express but it also has orders from Caltrans for Bay area bridges, from San Diego’s I-15 HOT lanes and from E-470 in Denver Colorado. Michael Briand head of Sirit told us he hopes to have 600k T-21 tags in use by the end of this year.

Early June Broady Cash of ARINC Annapolis MD the aviation electronics consultants was an independent observer at a series of tests for Amtech at its Albuquerque New Mexico facility designed to prove Amtech’s equipment is T-21 compliant. As we went to press Cash’s report had not been received by Caltrans but ARINC found no problems during the tests, we understand, so its formal qualification as a T-21 supplier seems now only a matter of formalities. Amtech is one of the pioneers of electronic tolling and has large operational systems in Asia, South America and Europe and in TX, OK, GA, LA, KS and the maritime provinces of Canada and is installing a large system in FL. It is the dominant supplier to railways. Amtech was recently made part of Intermec, the barcode giant which has also acquired rights to IBM’s inventory tracking electronic tags.

California too

Amtech has been qualifying its equipment for California because it sees a large market opening up on the San Francisco Bay area bridges — probably a million transponders will be needed in the next 2 years. Amtech wants to be in a position to bid against Sirit. The PB report mentions Denso and Tadiran having equipment that meets T-21 standards and says European producers can readily convert to T-21 specs. Industry people we consulted say that apart from Amtech other manufactuers are some distance from being in a position to offer T-21 equipment. In any case it is clear that Amtech’s tests of T-21 compliance will help it in Brazil as well as in California in so far as T-21 is adopted as a standard in line with the PB report.

Amtech and Combitech are the two major existing suppliers of ET in South America with Combitech having the largest single system— the huge Autopista de Sol in Buenos Aires. It also has a small system in Rio de Janiero. But Amtech has many more systems — 5 toll systems in the Rio area and 4 in Buenos Aires and a bunch in Mexico.

ASTMv6 for Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo the largest state of Brazil has apparently chosen to go ASTMv6. Raytheon has the first electronic toll system contract. It is for a highway being upgraded to motorway standard northwest out of the capital, it involves 22 toll lanes at 10 toll plazas along 300km. A first batch of 5,000 tags have been ordered from Delco. The PB report makes no mention of the SP state’s commitment to ASTMv6 active technology but it does suggest that Brazil follow the US-Canadian strategy of moving toward a new standard (ASTMv7) which will allow compatibility and perhaps interoperability between backscatter and active tag systems like ASTMv6. SP state authorities chose ASTMv6 for the same reasons it was favored in the N. America by some groups — that it offers more potential for the longer messages involved in controlling heavy trucks and, they say, in open road tolling.

If private sector toll authorities have a larger say it is likely they will often prefer the backscatter systems, like T-21, which are well proven to work adequately for most toll purposes, and are somewhat cheaper.

PB writing for the concessionaires recommends that the T-21 backscatter standard be adopted by their trade association ABCR, but how far the association could enforce it is unclear. Says the PB report: “Most operational ETC (electronic toll collection) systems in Brazil use backscatter technology developed by Amtech... (It) has proven effective for Brazil’s existing ETC needs, and has demonstrated its effectiveness in supporting expanded (applications). Other equipment suppliers are available... T-21 specifications allow backwards and forwards compatibility; provide economies of scale; provide a foundation for competition; and have demonstrated robustness.”

In the case of different existing systems, the reports suggests that the Brazilians use the Autopista Buen Aire model from Argentina, where Combitech (2.45GHz) and Amtech (915MHz) systems have large numbers of common patrons — they have both Combitech and Amtech readers on their gantries.

Smart cards (SCs) are taking off in Brazil, the PB report says, and already several major toll facilities are doing a lot of transactions with them at regular toll plazas. It suggests a SC user group of agencies modeled after the US interagency group to develop the use of SCs with ET tags. And that Brazil could benefit from centralized acquisition and distribution of toll tags and a clearinghouse system to settle balances between agencies. (Nathan Young UST&DA 703 875 4357, Gil Guedes ABCR guedes@ibpinet.com.br, Larry Yermack PB 212 465 5138. Report title: “Electronic Toll Collection Interoperability Study in Brazil”)