SWEDISH ET:SAAB has 1,557 lanes wired for ET, 1.7m tags worldwide

SAAB’s largest order is in Melbourne Australia for CityLink for 600k TS3200 tags and manufacture of these was subcontracted out to a local NEC factory there. SAAB says its tags have tested out well on what is the Swedish company’s first serious open road tolling installation. The elevated western half of CityLink opened Aug 15 and is carrying 140k veh/day free. Problems in the central computer system are delaying the start of actual tolling but the Swedish-designed tags are on the windshields of cars and test reads continue.

The 600k tags in Melbourne will communicate with 38 overhead readers (strictly transceivers) on gantries over the mainline of the toll road, according to the SAAB data sheet. It lists its Combitech Traffic Systems as the system integrator for Melbourne. It has supplied a machine vision (digital video) system that does detection, classification (by volumetric profiling), and license plate imaging. TheTS3200 tag-transceiver data system and the digital video system work together to form what SAAB calls its ‘Tollmatic’ electronic toll collection. In Melbourne SAAB’s responsibility ends at what it calls the interface with a central administrative system that is being developed by a local firm CSC.

SAAB’s first open road tolling attempt was in 1996 on the small A10/E55 Tauern Autobahn, which covers 43km including the famous Alps tunnel and associated approach roads in Austria. Nine single lanes and 3 open road lanes were wired with transceivers and with an earlier version of the digital video making up the Tollmatic system. We were told at the time by the toll road owner OSAG that they had terrible trouble setting up the system, taking about two years. (TR#12 Feb 97 p8) The claim was then made that this system was just a pilot which had not been intended to be used by the general public, though earlier articles in the trade press had detailed an elaborate marketing program together with the brand name ‘Funkmaut.’ SAAB says the system has been working well with some 2,000 tags and explains the small usage of the system as a desire to wait for the CEN standard so that there can be interoperability.

The Austrian government is presently looking at tenders for an ET system called Okopoint to toll trucks passing through the country, with tolls being levied first on the Brenner Autobahn (A13/E45) on the truck route between Munich Germany and Verona Italy. The Swiss and Germans also have extensive systems for truck ET as well.

By comparison with US deployments many of the existing European ET systems involve rather few tags, and extremely low ratios of tags to toll lane readers, so far. In France on a bunch of toll roads SAAB has 279 toll lanes wired but only 135k tags in use - about 500 tags/lane. There is little interoperability between the systems. But all this is changing with several manufacturers having got together to try and make an interoperable French system TIS and eventually a Euroopean system, out of fuzzy standards written at the European standards organization CEN. Under TIS SAAB is wiring 632 toll lanes on five major systems in France (AREA, SAPRR, SANEF, SAPN, SFTRF) with readers (transceivers) for 5.8GHz backscatter tags, which in the SAAB notation are called TS3200s. All these are lane-based retrofits to existing mainline toll plazas. SAAB tags will be interoperable with tags from other manufacturers and TIS is supposed to cover the whole of the French toll motorway system with 1,700 ET toll lanes by the summer of 2000.

SAAB has nearly 200k tags in use in Argentina. The bulk are on the vast AUSOL Autopista del Sol (one of the world’s widest highways with 18-travel lanes) where 108 toll lanes are equipped for the 2.4GHz TS3100 transponders. Another 11k are in use on three other Buenos Aires tollroads with 41 wired lanes. One system, Camino Buen Ayre, caters to the Combitech tags as well as Amtech read-only tags operating in the 902 to 915 MHz range. The last began operating for SAAB in 1998 and the others were switched on in 1995.

SAAB has some other systems in service with mid-frequency 2.45GHz TS3000/TS3100 tags:

- Penang Bridge and Shah Alam Exwy Malaysia, starting 1996, now 15 lanes and 45k tags in use

- Dartford Crossing M25 London UK started 1991 24-lanes 70k tags

- Mersey Tunnel Liverpool UK started 1993 38 lanes 70k tags

- Alesund and Trygg crossings Norway 1987 and 1992 4 lanes 5k tags

- Linha Florianopolis Brazil 1996 4 lanes 1k tags

- Shenzen Customs China 1996 26 lanes 30k tags

- DARS Slovenia 1996, 41 toll lanes 64k tags

- Europistas Spain 1995 82 toll lanes 10k tags

The higher frequency CEN-compliant 5.8GHz SAAB systems include:

- Manila Skyway Philippines with 105 toll lanes and 100k of the TS3200 tags

- LDP Hwy Malaysia 20 lanes 110k tags

- Dublin Ring Rd Ireland 20? toll lanes 5k tags

- Autopistas del Sol Spain 82 lanes 5k tags

- Great Belt Bridge Denmark 1998 4 toll lanes 65k tags

- Oresund Crossing Denm-Sweden 2000 6 lanes 100k tags

- Bosphorus Bridges Turkey 1999 22 lanes 100k tags

- Izmir-Cesme Hwy Turkey 1998 8 lanes 5k tags

Like Mark IV in North America SAAB Combitech has generally concentrated on supplying the transponder/reader systems, leaving system integration to other companies. GEA of Grenoble France has been teamed with SAAB most often but other system integrators where SAAB ET equipment is specified include CS Route, Ascom/Elsydel, SICE, ARCE, Philips, Aselan and local companies. (Jan.Svedevall@traffic.combitech.se www.combitech.se)