Technology Profile |
The lessons the parking world could
learn from tolling
| Need to know
How Egis is adding
value to Amsterdam’s
parking services
066 Traffic Technology International September/October 2019
www.TrafficTechnologyToday.com
and Mobility-as-a-Service
is just around the corner.
A new approach
More and more providers
can offer services to the user of
any given tolled infrastructure
or network.
In the US, companies like
Paytollo, Geotoll, Bancpass, and
Bestpass for commercial carriers
are more and more
intermediaries in the CRM
chain. In Europe, independent
toll service providers like
Easytrip – an Egis subsidiary –
provides tolling and mobilityadded
value services to its
customers, individual or
corporate fleets. Interoperability
is also a key issue where
Does this situation sound
familiar? A family is
vacationing in a city
near the sea and the local
municipality has implemented
a new on-street parking
mechanism. While the family
needs to unload their beach
stuff quickly because the kids
are already running away to the
beach and because the driver has
no coins, they need to download
the city-approved app. This
includes registering within
the app by typing numerous
elements of personal details to
finally be able to pay for parking.
Today, the public cannot pay
with one single app for onstreet/
off-street public or private
parking lot parking in any city
in any given country. Multiple
apps are needed, and do not
include any fines. If a driver is
fined, they have to go through a
painful process of paying it.
Customers often get pushed
back from the parking operator
to the parking owner when
disputing a transaction and
a parking violation.
Many years ago, the public
faced the same situation in the
tolling world but solutions were
found to overcome the
challenges. In fact, tolling and
smart parking share a lot in
common so tolling operators
could bring benefits to simplify
smart parking in the future.
Taking its toll
Tolling technology evolved
from a cash/coin manual toll
collection system with toll
plazas and toll booths to All-
Electronic Tolling (AET) freeflow
solutions, providing faster
travel journeys and a better
driving experience.
It is an industry with small
dollar face values from a high
number of vehicles that can total
millions of registered,
unregistered or pay-as-you-go
> More than 170,000 license
plate checks processed
each day of the year
> More than 180,000
parking permits handled
every year
> €200m ($222.5m) in
parking fees collected
annually
users. There is a strong customer
service component to tolling, as
managing the relationship
between the user of the
infrastructure – the driver –
and its public or private owner
is essential.
There is now a need for more
ubiquitous customer service,
service delivery and addedvalue
service provisions.
Customers expect to get
interconnected services
everywhere they travel and
services that blend multiple
transportation modes that fit
their needs, rather than the
service asking the customers to
adapt to them. Mobility pricing
and road user charging
becoming an extension of tolling
/www.TrafficTechnologyToday.com