Electronic toll collection

Electronic toll collection (ETC) is a wireless system to automatically collect the usage fee or toll charged to vehicles using toll roads, HOV lanes, toll bridges, and toll tunnels.^[1] It is a faster alternative which is replacing toll booths, where vehicles must stop and the driver manually pays the toll with cash or a card. In most systems, vehicles using the system are equipped with an automated radio transponder device. When the vehicle passes a roadside toll reader device, a radio signal from the reader triggers the transponder, which transmits back an identifying number which registers the vehicle's use of the road, and an electronic payment system charges the user the toll.

A major advantage is the driver does not have to stop, reducing traffic delays. Electronic tolling is cheaper than a staffed toll booth, reducing transaction costs for government or private road owners. The ease of varying the amount of the toll makes it easy to implement road congestion pricing, including for high-occupancy lanes, toll lanes that bypass congestion, and city-wide congestion charges. The payment system usually requires users to sign up in advance and load money into a declining-balance account, which is debited each time they pass a toll point.

Electronic toll lanes may operate alongside conventional toll booths so that drivers who do not have transponders can pay at the booth. Open road tolling is an increasingly popular alternative which eliminates toll booths altogether; electronic readers mounted beside or over the road read the transponders as vehicles pass at highway speeds, eliminating traffic bottlenecks created by vehicles slowing down to go through a toll booth lane. Vehicles without transponders are either excluded or pay by plate – a license plate reader takes a picture of the license plate to identify the vehicle, and a bill may be mailed to the address where the car's license plate number is registered, or drivers may have a certain amount of time to pay online or by phone.^[2]

Singapore was the first city in the world to implement an electronic road toll collection system known as the Singapore Area Licensing Scheme for purposes of congestion pricing, in 1974. Since 2005, nationwide GNSS road pricing systems have been deployed in several European countries. With satellite-based tolling solutions, it is not necessary to install electronic readers beside or above the road in order to read transponders since all vehicles are equipped with On Board Units having Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers in order to determine the distance traveled on the tolled road network - without the use of any roadside infrastructure.

US Nobel Economics Prize winner William Vickrey was the first to propose a system of electronic tolling for the Washington Metropolitan Area in 1959. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the first prototype systems were tested. Norway has been a world pioneer in the widespread implementation of this technology, beginning in 1986. Italy was the first country to deploy a full electronic toll collection system in motorways at national scale in 1989.