Translink French share sold to Oz co

Translink Operations the toll systems integrator for the innovative Melbourne CityLink project is now a fully Australian company. In November Egis, the large French engineering company sold its 50% interest in Translink Ops to the other shareholder Transurban, the Australian construction and engineering firm. Translink Operations has the contract for operating the tolling system at CityLink.

Egis engineer Salahdin Yacoubi who led the development of the CityLink toll system while at Translink, has remainded in Melbourne but is working out of a new local Egis subsidiary Egis Consulting Australia Pty Ltd.

The toll system at CityLink is only the second in the world – after 407-ETR in Toronto – to do a mix of transponder and video toll transactions at full highway speed under open road conditions. During a recent visit we got the impression the system is working quite well, collecting most tolls and is certainly a viable competitive model with the Raytheon HTMS system.

It can be improved however, people in Melbourne told us: (1) system software still has too many ‘clumsy workarounds’ and requires too many manual interventions and needs more algorithms for automatic adjustment (2) the license plate illumination angle could be improved with lights on booms or on a second gantry (3) the unlimited-use day pass is a festering mess with no enforcement of stated limits and the first signs of some revenue loss by heavy users exploiting the loophole. Lesson: a toll is a charge per trip and needs to apply to all trips (except fire/police/ambulance on emergency duty.) Special deals, toll caps, and unlimited-use passes are expensive, difficult to ad