One of the major causes of congestion on roadways is cars stopping to pay tolls. While services such as EZPass in the United States, which employs RFID technology, helps to ease congestion by requiring motorists only to slow down rather than come to a complete stop when passing through tolls, a Dublin company is looking into the use of satellites to eliminate the need for toll booths altogether on Dublin roads.

Mapflow, along with the Dublin Transportation Office, is conducting a study under the Active Road Management Assisted by Satellite project to determine whether satellite technology can be used to monitor road usage in Dublin. The system uses in-vehicle black boxes and global satellite positioning (GPS) data to determine the exact route a driver has traveled so a fair and precise toll can be calculated after each journey.

“The overall goal, in Europe in particular, is to move toward a utility-based bill, much like a mobile phone bill, for your use of the roads,” Harvey Appelbe, Mapflow’s chief technical officer, told Satellite News. “So according to the time, the place and the congested nature of the road, there would be a charge and that charge is related to the cost on the economy of you driving.”

The first phase of testing, which has been completed, was designed to check the feasibility of using GPS coordinates to identify road locations. A specially equipped car fitted with more than 10 test devices, including a range of vendor solutions and high accuracy survey equipment, traveled around Dublin collecting data.

The upcoming phase is “designed to benchmark GPS performance within the various urban environments, those being the biggest problem areas,” Appelbe said. The test will involve at least 30 cars equipped with satellite navigation equipment and will monitor the road usage of the vehicles as they travel normally around the city. The equipment will track miles traveled during peak and non-peak hours, as well where the car was driven, whether it be in the city or rural areas surrounding the city.

The initial trials are being funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), and Mapflow estimates the overall ESA funding on system testing will exceed 2.5 million euros ($3 million).

If the system proves viable, Mapflow predicts that congestion on roadways would be reduced due to a variety of factors, including the removal of toll booths and the ability to charge higher premiums for roads more likely to be congested at certain times of the day. Mapflow expects drivers to alter their driving patterns to allow for the cheapest trip possible, which, in theory, would spread traffic across more roads instead of concentrated on a few main avenues. Information provided by Mapflow on the project said, “The road network only needs to see a modest reduction in congestion to become unsaturated and much more efficient.”

But do not expect to see these changes happening overnight, Appelbe said. “This isn’t going to happen in the next year or with the next five years,” he said. “Honestly, I think it is more likely to happen within the next 10 years.” The long-term implementation goal also would provide auto manufacturers time to account for the placement of satellite navigation and tracking devices in vehicles in their new vehicle lines, he said.

–Gregory Twachtman

(Iseult White, Mapflow, +35 3163 41038)