Austrian ITS company Kapsch TrafficCom has completed and officially delivered the fully modernized truck toll collection system to ASFiNAG, the state-owned operator of Austria’s motorway network.
Awarded the contract in November 2016, Kapsch has now successfully deployed a complete upgrade of ASFiNAG’s GO Maut 2.0 Austria-wide toll collection system for vehicles weighing over 3.5 tons. The company has modernized the roadside infrastructure at around 500 locations nationally, and has also upgraded the corresponding back-office toll collection and processing system at the operator’s central location (RSE proxy). The entire contract has been implemented with the greatest possible domestic added value, with almost all the core components, including the application software in the toll collection technology, developed by Kapsch employees and produced in-house at the company’s production site in Vienna. Most of the participating subcontractors were also local Austrian companies, including: Forster (steel construction), Mehler (control cabinet construction), B&R (industrial computers), DBP, and Eqos (installation services).
Kapsch is confident that its overhaul of the 1,370 mile (2,200km) Austrian toll system will set new technological standards worldwide. Instead of the previous two-gantry system, the new roadside toll collection system only requires a single enforcement gantry at each section of highway. The gantries carry RFID readers and ALPR cameras, as well as the first nationwide use of Kapsch’s nVDC optical vehicle classification system. Using high-resolution video cameras and stereo video image-processing technologies, the vehicle’s class and number of axles can be determined in free-flowing traffic, enabling a high degree of precision in enforcing the tariffs paid by different types and sizes of vehicle. The nVDC technology uses infrared light to enable precise vehicle classification, irrespective of speed, at any time of day and night, and under all weather conditions.
The central control center has been completely redesigned and uses innovative plausibility algorithms, based on a new database image-processing methodology that considerably increases the efficiency of toll collection, leading to major reductions in the cost of enforcement operations. In line with the Austrian government’s, and ASFiNAG’s, ‘green’ ambitions, the entire system has also been designed to be much more energy efficient, with new energy-saving components used in roadside equipment, which will lead to a major reduction in the network’s power consumption.
The complete project included:
387 toll gates modernized; 72 monitoring stations modernized; 34 new toll gates built; 4 new monitoring stations built; 6 main toll collection stations modernized; Commissioning of a site-redundant data center for toll enforcement and the processing of toll collection transactions; Establishment and setup of a 24/7 technical operating center for toll collection and monitoring technology.
During and after the installation process was completed in April, in-depth test phases took place to ensure the system meets ASFiNAG’s high quality and safety standards. During the six-month optimization phase, expert assessors reviewed the system’s sophisticated quality parameters, which were confirmed as being within the range of the specified levels. Kapsch will be in charge of the technical operation and maintenance of the system for the next 10 years, with the option of five one-year extensions.
