Investigating the next generation mobile wireless technology to deliver a pervasive mobile pervasive computing environment for road user charging and other ITS services

摘要

Wireless devices are pervasive in everyday life from mobile phones to millimetre precision locating systems (GPS). Wireless technology is advancing at speed and the opportunities for use in the intelligent transport field are immeasurable and include areas such as road user charging, congestion control and fleet management. The opportunity to harness the potential of new, intelligent infrastructure within the road transport sector will be a major research issue of the next decade. The ability to monitor, sense, manage and communicate with vehicles, the roadside control systems and the driver offers new and currently unexplored new tools to manage the road network more efficiently. One key application of a more pervasive approach to control would be the possibility of using such a system to implement an incremental road-user charging system across the whole of the UK road network in a much more intelligent way than is currently envisaged by the Secretary for State for transport and his National Road User Charging Steering Committee which suggests that within 10 years the UK could use a GPS-based solution pay as you drive solution to replace the fixed price vehicle excise duty (car tax) by a variable charge relating to the usage made of the vehicle. This paper examines and comments on the current issues of road-user charging in the UK from two perspectives; technical and political. The paper concludes that the lack of appropriate technology will not be the constraint in implementing road-user charging in the near future in the UK. However, the existing local authority schemes in London and Durham, the on-going National Trials in Leeds, the policy of introducing distance-based charging for HGV's and the recent announcement by the Secretary of State for Transport to examine the possibility of a National Road Use Charging scheme utilising a probable black-box approach in all UK registered vehicles suggests certain policy and technology divergences which may be difficult to sell to the public.