MANAGING OPENROAD TOLLING
Introducing large-scale open road tolling in South Africa provides lessons
for similar projects elsewhere in the world
With every large-scale project there
is a fi ne balance in determining and
applying a suitable performance
measurement regime to accurately refl ect
meaningful performance measures without
sacrifi cing sanity in the application thereof.
Tolplan, a toll road management and
engineering consultancy, performed the
role of the employer’s representative for
the South African National Roads Agency
Limited in respect of the design-buildoperate
of the Gauteng Open Road Tolling
(ORT) project, which records nearly 1
billion transactions a year. The Road Side
System (RSS) component comprises 43
tolling points equipped with equipment
supplied by Kapsch Traffi cCom across four
major motorways, covering approximately
201 km of motorway and 186 traffi c lanes
cumulatively, in the Gauteng Province.
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
When deciding relevant performance
criteria, the design should be kept simple
yet meet the objectives for critical aspects of
the system. It is easy to fall into the pitfall of
over-engineering by maintaining visibility
and control of as many aspects of the
system as possible. This approach is
cumbersome and seldom is an eff ective
control method.
Initially, two major RSS performance
categories were identifi ed as availability
and vehicle data collection processing
accuracy, where each category identifi ed
related to either transaction assurance or
accurate and cost-eff ective billing of
vehicle passages, both categories being
of paramount importance to ensure a
sustainable and equitable tolling solution.
For this purpose, eight key performance
indicators were defi ned as follows:
• Availability
• Vehicle detection accuracy
• Automatic vehicle classifi cation
• Automatic License Plate Recognition
(ALPR) split into trigger, capture, and
correct read rates
• Tag reading and tag allocation
62 TOLLTRANS 2020
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During the operations phase it was clear the
RSS could be simplifi ed, given the system’s
high performance and shortcomings of the
performance management regime. This led
to a reduction in the number of KPIs, where
separate but related measurements were
consolidated. However, the most striking
change was replacing the availability
measurement model with a mechanism
to identify and quantify transaction losses
incurred as a result of downtime.
This was prompted, in part, by
concerns surrounding the intended
purpose of the availability measurement
model, namely to safeguard against
revenue losses as a result of system
downtime or degradation. In practice,
however, it demonstrated inconsistent
penalisation of the operating company
which was not always equivalent with
loss of transactions in downtime periods.
This paradigm shift demonstrated
near insignifi cant revenue loss in
comparison with the volume of generated
transactions, but it also had a direct positive
impact on the operation and maintenance
of the system by the operating company,
as it was simpler to understand the
impact of incidents in terms of direct
Gauteng’s ORT
project covers
201km
revenue losses rather than a convoluted
availability calculation.
CONCLUSION
It can be tempting to over-engineer a
solution, especially to maintain control
over production outputs; however, for
a performance management regime this
approach is seldom ideal. Establishing a
successful regime hinges on the application
of fundamental design objectives such as
simplicity and practical application, but
also requires an objective assessment of
your goals, once implemented, and sound
judgement in the optimisation and
enhancement of the performance
measurement scheme. Having an
experienced and knowledgeable team
throughout this process will ensure the
successful design and implementation of
a performance management regime to help
you stay in touch with what’s really
happening.
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
by Joseph King, Tolplan, South Africa
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