Vitronic, based in Wiesbaden, Germany, will supply automatic tolling solutions for a truck charging system to be implemented on 15,000km of French roads. The multi-million euro contract is part of the prestigious Ecotaxe project, overseen by Ecomouv. Vitronic was selected by French Thales group which is in charge of the enforcement system.
Due to come into effect from mid-2013, the Ecotaxe project introduces a distance-based tax for trucks, with all vehicles over 3.5 tons paying a tax on French national roads. The fee will be collected by means of an onboard GPS satellite system.
Vitronic will equip more than 170 fixed gantries with an innovative automatic enforcement solution, TollChecker Freeflow, which will monitor about 1,000 road lanes all across France. The system, based on technology that's been operational in Germany for truck tolling since 2005, provides fully automatic vehicle detection, classification and identification by number plate in free-flowing traffic.
'I am proud that after tolling projects in Germany, Australia and Eastern European countries, we can again contribute to the implementation of a large-scale road user charging project. This proves that we have been on the right track in strengthening the quality, performance and cost efficiency of our technology,' said Dr Norbert Stein, general manager of Vitronic.
The system provides high vehicle identification rates through its lidar technology, excellent number plate read rates, and vehicle monitoring with just a single gantry.
