EU Referendum

Showing posts with label road charging. Show all posts

link[i-link]According to Heise online, the EU's Galileo navigation system has been clawed back from the precipice and will live to see another day.

As we left it, the companies forming the development consortium for the system were refusing to incorporate a company which could take the project forward.

This left the EU commission without a formal partner and no entity which could order the satellites needed to set up the system, leaving the commission to consider handing responsibility for the system to a public body – thereby virtually ensuring its demise.

If they are good at nothing else, however, the "colleagues" need take lessons from no one in brinkmanship. Thus, yesterday, the consortium capitulated and the separate companies signed the articles of incorporation of a registered company.

However, this is but one small step, and the problems affecting Galileo are by no means resolved. Forbes cites Michele Cercone, spokesman for EU transport commissioner Jacques "Wheel" Barrot, saying that the consortium's move is a "commitment, not a result".

The transport council is due to meet in Brussels today to discuss the next step, and they will find that the underlying flaws in the commercial model have not gone away. In fact, they may be intensifying.

link[i-link]Reliable information is difficult to get but there are rumours circulating that the German road charging system – the only one in Europe so far that uses satellite positioning data to provide charging information – is running into serious problems. Unofficial reports suggest that the system is having difficulty in processing all the information and that as many as 60 percent of vehicles are escaping charges.

Income from road charging systems using Galileo is a vital component of the cost recovery plan and if they cannot deliver, then the project is in even more difficulty than its critics would have it.

That might explain the outgoing French president's parting shot, recorded here.

Despite the opposition of key EU member states, including Germany, Chirac – out of the blue - is demanding an immediate end to the boycott of arms sales to China. Sales of weapons relying on satellite guidance, some of which would be manufactured by consortium partner EADS, would help to underwrite the costs of commissioning Galileo. With China also favouring its own system, it might help pull it back into the project, also easing the financial crisis.

That much, of course, will not be discussed openly by the commission tomorrow, and it is unlikely that anything of the current traumas will be found in the mainstream media, which has largely ignored the project. But the time is fast approaching when serious financial decisions have to be made, at which point the taxpayers of the EU member states could find themselves having to meet a rather large and unexpected bill.

Brinkmanship may then not be enough.

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link[i-link]On its front page today, The Times runs an "exclusive" on road charging, revealing that Britain "will be divided into a patchwork of road-pricing zones where drivers will be charged varying rates". This, says the newspaper, will allow the government to make motorists pay by the mile without tracking them on every road.

Ministers "believe" that a zonal system would protect drivers' privacy and deter them from rat-running in residential areas to avoid high charges on main roads. All roads in each zone would be charged at the same rate, regardless of how congested they were.

It does seem that the government has taken on board the main concern of users, which "appeared to be that road pricing would allow every driver's movements to be tracked through a satellite positioning device in each car." The idea is that that tracking could be avoided by abandoning the idea of having a complex charging system in which the price varied from street to street.

This is Dr Ladyman, the current roads minister, who does not seem to have thought this through. If the system is still based on charging per mile – as seems to be the case – then how would the system detect the mileage travelled by each vehicle, other than by tracking them?

Further, if the charging basis is levied according to zone, it ceases to be a congestion management tool. All drivers will have experienced, for instance, the flow of vehicles into a city in the morning rush hour, with the roads absolutely choked, while the opposite direction is completely clear. How could the term "congestion charge" be justified when motorists driving in either direction is charged the same?

What comes over therefore, is that this charge is going to be a tax and, if the system is to be based on the EU's Galileo system, it has the makings of an EU tax as well.

Either way, the dead hand of the EU pervades the working out of policy, even if Stephen Ladyman doesn’t always seem to understand it. He has, according to The Times also confirmed that the Government was considering a special charging scheme for foreign lorries to force them to contribute towards the costs of the road network.

Under the scheme, which could be introduced within two years, foreign hauliers would have to buy and display a permit, known as a vignette, costing about £7 a day.

That foreign trucks are a problem is indisputable, not least with reports they are now imposing road wear costs of £195 million per year.

But the minister must know that what he proposes is illegal under EU law – a similar scheme having been abandoned for exactly the same reason. No scheme can be allowed which imposes a different system for foreign trucks, otherwise this is regarded as discrimination on the grounds of nationality, which is outlawed by the Treaties.

This is one of the attractions of a universal road charging scheme, but this is going nowhere until the minister comes clean about the underlying agenda. And despite Ladyman’s determination to win the debate, he is not making a very good job of it. All he is managing to do is confirm our worst suspicions.

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Navstar+IIA[i-Navstar+IIA]A quite remarkable illustration of how desperately doth the Europhiles cling to their little myths is offered in The Telegraph today, this one from Walter Blanchard, former adviser to the EC on satellite navigation.

Viz-à-viz the use of the free-to-user "Navstar" GPS system as the basis for road charging, he tells us that, "GPS (he means Navstar) cannot ever be used to enforce anything in this country because it is an American-owned, -operated and -controlled military system."

Er no. For sure, the system is operated by the military but, since 1996, the operational policy was defined by the Interagency GPS Executive Board.

Currently, it is managed by the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee. This was established by Presidential Directive in 2004 to advise and coordinate federal departments and agencies on matters concerning the GPS and related systems.

The Executive Committee is chaired jointly by the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transportation. Its membership includes equivalent-level officials from the Departments of State, Commerce, and Homeland Security, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and NASA. Components of the Executive Office of the President participate as observers to the Executive Committee, and the FCC Chairman participates as a liaison.

Apparently unaware of this, former EC advisor Mr Blanchard goes on to say that, "America has repeatedly refused, rightly, to allow foreign participation, much less legally enforceable control (of Navstar). It advises civil users that it accepts no responsibility for its accuracy, availability or reliability, and it does not guarantee anything." He therefore concludes that:

It is quite obvious that, if this does not change, it will be impossible to make British law around it. This is the main problem that led to the initiation of the European civil-controlled system Galileo. Road-pricing enforcement using a satnav system will have to wait until Galileo is in fully certified operation, which perhaps may not be until 2020 or later.

Interesting that: "…2020 or later." It was supposed to be up and running by 2012 and Alexander wants road charging in place by 2015. Anyhow, as to the substantive point about enforcement – that simply does not compute. How is it that the Germans have a Navstar-based road charging system and are having no problems with enforcement?

If the letter to the Telegraph reflects the quality of advice Mr Blanchard had to offer, no wonder the Galileo system in trouble.

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Traffic+001[i-Traffic+001]If politicians wish to find out why we hold them in such low regard, they need go no further than look at the wunderkind transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, who is trying to tell us that the satellite road charging system he proposes would not involve an invasion of privacy.

It is The Register, however, that notes that Alexander has also promised there would be "safeguards" to deal with the privacy issue.

Observers of the government data kleptocracy, The Register continues, will be familiar with the "safeguards" gambit, and of course one would not need to implement privacy safeguards if one were not threatening privacy, right? "So it's not exactly a denial", it concludes.

In fact, anyone familiar with the workings of satellite-based road charging systems will know that the privcy issue lies at the heart of the proposedsystem. Its central feature is differential pricing according to location, time and distance travelled, which can only work if the whereabouts of vehicles are known whenever they are on the move.

As far as safeguarding data goes though, as we noted earlier, promises on protection of data are not Alexander's to give. All we need is an EU agreement that information should be "shared" (i.e., given to government agencies) and the game is over.

And, when the technology exists for police to interrogate the on-board computer of any car – in real time - one can see that the attraction of the system would make it irresistible to enforcement agencies and sundry government officials.

But then, as the Telegraph tells us this morning, the "debate" – if you can call it that - is a sham. The decision has already been made.

Furthermore, un-recorded by the media at large, the Department for Transport has already expended massive sums on the EU's Galileo system.

To September last year, in addition to a contribution of €31 million then planned, specific UK contributions to the programme have been €15.3 million (at 1998 prices) for the definition phase and €95.7 million (at 2001 prices) towards the development and validation phase. That is on top of the normal contributions to the EU, some of which have been used on Galileo.

Petition+003[i-Petition+003]In all, taxpayers have already "contributed" an estimated £200 million to the system at the heart of the road charging system. The government is not going to be expending that sort of money without looking for a payback and, as we know, it is already in discussion with a German technology company about implementing systems.

Slowly, therefore, people are getting the picture, and they like not what they see. That is undoubtedly why the petition is now up to 1,401,511 signatures - from 1,369,970 last night. And it looks set to reach two million by the time it closes on 20 February. The government is going to have to come to terms with the fact that we are not all as stupid as it thinks.

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Inde+-+cars[i-Inde+-+cars]Very much on the back foot of late, transport secretary Douglas Alexander is pledging to "listen, deliberate and discuss" the issues raised by the petition on the No. 10 website urging Tony Blair to "forget about road pricing".

Standing at 1,369,970 signatures (at the time of writing), with seven days to go, the petition has proved a huge embarrassment for the government, which is having one of its main policy ideas on transport – in fact, virtually its only idea – comprehensively trashed.

We look at Mr Alexander's options, here.

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link[i-link]There is an interesting photographic essay here on the enforcement of road charging in Germany. This is the sort of thing from which your average journalist could benefit - but won't.

I didn't realise, for instance, that the enforcement agency can interrogate your OBU, via an infra-red link, using a hand-held monitor. In theory (and practice) therefore, police can carry out real time roadside checks on cars fitted with road charging equipment – without stopping the drivers – to find out where they have been. Unless the drivers are subsequently told, they would be totally unaware that their movements had been checked in this way.

The civil liberty implications of this are horrendous.

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Traffic[i-Traffic]The Telegraph's transport correspondent, David Millward, has finally woken up to the fact that "Brussels has demanded that all member state road pricing schemes should not only be harmonised, but be capable of linking with the EU's £2.3 billion Galileo satellite." He writes, in today's newspaper:

Brussels's insistence that road-pricing technology works with Galileo was seen by critics as a way of ensuring the project recoups income from licence fees paid by tolling authorities. Such demands will apply to all road pricing and toll systems introduced since the turn of the year. Existing schemes could be forced to use the same technology.

The Galileo project, a European rival to the Americans' GPS satellite — also hopes to make money from selling its services to companies making compatible satellite navigation devices.

In addition Brussels expects the onboard units, which should be harmonised across the EU, will also be capable of enforcing a wide range of road pricing schemes — from London's congestion charge to a German motorway tolling scheme and even, where possible, time spent in a garage or car park.

Of course, readers of the Sunday Telegraph could have seen this in the Booker column in June 2005, we wrote about it in the blog in the same month, but also as early as March 2005 and again the same month.

But we are talking about Directive 2004/52/EC of 29 April 2004, on the interoperability of electronic road toll systems within the Community, so I suppose it is a little harsh to expect the Telegraph to notice it in less than 2½ years.

But isn't it so good to see professionals at work!

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TRANS+-+OBU+001[i-TRANS+-+OBU+001]An interesting letter found its way into The Daily Telegraph today, from London-based David Leeder, vice chairman of the commission for integrated transport.

He observes that the campaign launched by the paper against road pricing is "curious". Why, asserts Leeder, "should tarmac be priced any differently from, say, electricity or telecommunications? If anything, it is in shorter supply, and yet the driver in a motorway jam will pay exactly the same in fuel, car tax and car insurance as a driver in rural Wales whizzing along an empty road." He continues:

The costs to the driver are the same, wherever he is and however much he uses the service. And yet we pay more for using electricity or the telephone at peak times because we think it right to charge more when something is in more demand. Most economists agree with this. So does Sir Rod Eddington, who has recently put the cost to the United Kingdom of our congested roads at £7 billion to £8 billion a year.

Charging for road use as we do any other service would quite simply make better use of the existing network. Some roads would be expensive – and some very, very cheap. At the Commission for Integrated Transport, we have established that replacing car and fuel tax with a system of variable national road pricing could cut congestion by 44 percent, traffic by five percent.

Faster and more reliable car journeys would bring huge benefits to the economy.

TRANS+-+Gantry[i-TRANS+-+Gantry]Mr Leeder, however, has missed the point. Firstly, as he indicates, the system is only likely to be accepted if motorists believe that road pricing will be used as an alternative to road taxation, and not simply as another revenue stream for a cash-strapped government. And very few people actually believe that it will be treated in any other way than as more cash for Gordon.

Secondly, there are serious – and in my view unresolvable – civil liberty issues linked to the GPS technology that will be the core of any national road pricing system. Many people complain about an ID card but this issue, in its own way, is just as serious – that every journey anyone takes in their own car will be recorded and it will become possible, in real time, to identify the location of any car in the road. This is totally unacceptable.

However, if we are correct, there is no immediate likelihood of a national system of road pricing being introduced. With the regulatory and technical delays involved, it would be amazing if we see anything before 2020.

TRANS+-+Patrol[i-TRANS+-+Patrol]If we are to have a serious debate about the issue, though, many journalists need to up their game. In May last, we noted the extreme ignorance displayed in one newspaper about how a GPS-based pricing system worked. And yesterday, we saw another quite stunning example of the same ignorance.

This was from transport correspondent David Millward, who told us that the system "entails fitting a black box in a car which enables a GPS satellite to track the vehicle's movements and calculate a 'pay as you drive' bill."

He then told us that "the satellite could be thwarted by a device known as a GPS jammer, which costs around £140." Even though they are illegal throughout the European Union, Millward adds, they are readily available in the Far East and could be imported from countries such as Taiwan.

Thus does our correspondent call in aid David Broughton, the director of the Royal the Institute of Navigation to add that, "People could be really resentful with the sort of charges they could face… They may well look for ways of getting around it and jammers could become very popular."

One really does wish of those people that they would take the time to find out how systems worked before opening their mouths and inserting their feet firmly in the cavities.

As we explained in our May post, GPS is a passive system – it is blind. The satellites simply transmit signals, which are received by the ground equipment – and it is this equipment which calculate the positions. Those data are then sent on to the control station by an integral GMS mobile phone, where the billing is calculated and charges raised. A typical unit is illustrated, top left.

One really wonders at the nature of minds of people like Millward. Has he any idea how big and how complex a satellite would have to be – and the amount of power it would consume – if it had continuously, actively to track the millions of cars underneath its path, identify them and them communicate to a ground station the charging details of each vehicle tracked?

TRANS+-+stop[i-TRANS+-+stop]As for the idea of jamming the signal, what would be the point? The enforcement system is entirely different from the registration and charging system. Road users are monitored by either by gantry-mounted cameras, with automatic number plate recognition (top right), or mobile camera units.

The system checks whether vehicles have logged into the system and, if not, alerts mobile patrols (illustrated, above left) and a uniformed official (right) then stops the "rogue" vehicles. Vehicles jamming the signal would not register on the system and would, therefore, automatically be marked down for stopping.

Once again, these facts are easily and quickly verifiable on the internet, but getting your facts right these days – it seems – is an optional extra.

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Spy%20in%20sky[i-Spy%20in%20sky]Bursting onto the front page of the Daily Express today is the banner headline (illustrated), "Spy in the sky on motorists" – the paper's "take" on the announcement by the newly appointed transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, that he intends to make satellite-based road pricing his "personal priority".

The government's "big idea" for reducing road congestion is to impose a system of variable charging which could force motorists to pay up to £1.34 per mile at peak times, with lower charges – down to 2p per mile – on less frequented roads.

Predictably – and understandably – the paper picks up on the "big brother" aspect of the system, noting that the technology could be used to "snoop on the private lives of citizens" – a highly justified fear as the system itself relies on being able to record, very accurately, every journey you make in a car.

And, as the Express's strap warns, the same technology could be used for monitoring vehicle speeds, with the spectre of a speeding ticket winging its way to your door every time you go over the posted limit. Further down the line – although not noted by the paper – is the possibility of installing "intelligent" speed limiters, which actually prevent a driver exceeding the posted limits in any area.

Spy%20in%20sky%202[i-Spy%20in%20sky%202]Hillariously, the report author, "transport editor" John Ingham, seems not to have the faintest idea of how the system works, hence a lurid graphic (illustrated) which portrays an anonymous satellite actively tracking a vehicle, "beaming back" the information to a "transport HQ".

For the record, this is not at all how the system works. In fact, it utilises the GPS satellite navigation system and – of very great interest, to which we will refer shortly – this will almost certainly be the EU's Galileo system. This system, in common with the US "Navstar" GPS system, is entirely passive, each satellite in the constellation simply transmitting a time signal. With three or more such signals, a vehicle-mounted receiver can translate these data into positional information and tell drivers where they are.

An on board unit[i-An on board unit]For a road pricing system, this information is processed by what is called an "on board unit" (OBU) which holds personal and vehicle details in its microchip memory. It continually processes satellite signals to work out positioning, integrates those data with the personal details and then transmits that information via an in-built GMS mobile phone to a receiving station. There, the trip details are recorded and charges are calculated. Generally, the user then receives a monthly invoice, or cash can be withdrawn directly from users' bank accounts.

To prevent "free riders", there is also a separate, but linked enforcement system. This involves, typically, road gantries with highly sophisticated cameras linked to number plate recognition software. The German system is also able to take 3-D infra-red images, which can identify the type of vehicle going through.

A German camera gantry used to enforce the toll system[i-A German camera gantry used to enforce the toll system]Every vehicle going under a gantry (or past a free-mounted and sometimes vehicle-borne camera) is recorded and the details are checked with the charging database. It the vehicle is not registered, details are automatically beamed to mobile enforcement units which intercept the vehicle and take the necessary action.

Such a system has been applied very successfully in Germany, through a private company set up to run the scheme, called Toll Collect. Detailed information on the scheme can be found here (64 pages, PDF).

Crucially, though, what makes the system politically acceptable – and feasible – is that it only applies to trucks, and then only to the motorway system. This ensures that the high proportion of foreign trucks transiting the system bear their share of the running costs, the surplus income being used wholly for road maintenance.

Furthermore, the sensitive "big brother" issue does not apply, as there is no problem about truck journeys being recorded. Also, charges are set at a relatively modest level, between 9-13 cents per Km for a three-axle truck, depending on emission levels. That emission "discount" has been highly welcomed as it creates an incentive to operate "green" trucks. Additionally, there is a surcharge for empty trucks, which has seen the number of empty runs reduce by 17 percent, keeping trucks off the road.

However, what Alexander is proposing is in a wholly different league. Given the huge number of private vehicles on British roads – approximately 25 million, as against less than 500,000 goods vehicles – and the extent of the road network, he is setting out to try something, the scale of which has never been attempted before – all in the context where over 30 percent of the DVLA database contains errors.

The government track-record on major computer systems is lamentable and the sheer practicalities of getting the scheme up and running are daunting. Most likely, this would be another spectacular failure.


The Galileo satellite constellation[i-The Galileo satellite constellation]Nevertheless, in order to get public agreement, Alexander might attempt to sugar the pill by promising to lower petrol tax. But, according to the Express, fewer than one percent of drivers actually believe the government would do this. The charges would be yet another tax on motorists. Combine that with the "civil liberties" issue of all journey data being recorded and public hostility is almost guaranteed.

But there is also a strong EU dimension. Although the German system currently uses the US GPS signal, the EU commission is determined that any European system should be based exclusively on Galileo (illustrated above), for which use it will be charging national operators. Therein lies the prospect of a lucrative "Euro-tax", with motorists contributing to the EU coffers every time they take to the roads.

Needless to say, the former Europe minister is silent on this aspect and it is not mentioned by the Express. But Alexander is determined to move the debate from "why" to "how". He will have a battle on his hands, not least from the Eurosceptic community.

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