July/Aug 2004

Road-user charging systems are set to boom in the coming years. Sales of systems and equipment are likely to grow across Europe at 10 per cent a year for the next seven years, and the highest growth rate - 35 per cent - will be in on-board units.

That's the consultancy perspective, anyway. Whatever qualms the transport and logistics world might have about telematics-based lorry road-user charging, international analyst Frost says there are clear signs of what it calls "impressive market growth".

At the moment, Frost says, electronic toll collection systems dominate the European road-user charging market, holding an 84 per cent share. This is the type of system used in Austria, which monitors vehicle movements from overhead gantries on motorways.

However, Frost says this technology will be overtaken in the long term by more expensive vehicle positioning systems using GPS, GSM, GPRS or 3G - the kind of system planned for Germany's LKW Maut system, and also in the UK.

Frost says market growth will be spurred by efforts to achieve Europe-wide interoperability in toll systems and meet Comite Europeen de Normalisation (CEN) standardisation norms. These "are likely to motivate European countries to implement road user charging systems in one form or another," it concludes.

Although on-board systems are more expensive than fixed systems, Frost says they present the opportunity for faster payback for governments or public authorities. It expects revenues derived from the European toll operations to grow from 12.9 million euros in 2003 to 17.7 million euros in 2011.

Currently, Frost says, France is the largest geographical market for road user charging systems, followed by Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal and Norway. Large-scale road user charging schemes are planned in the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Spain and Norway, giving further momentum to market growth.