Irish toll roads will not have the technology in place to give motorists access to the new standardised electronic tolling systems proposed for EU-wide introduction in 2005.
According to a recent report, the European Commission is to propose harmonising toll systems in the EU, in a bid to cut queues and boost the electronics industry. The Commission wants a single electronic tolling system available for all major EU roads for trucks and coaches by 2005 and for cars by 2010. The new standard would allow carmakers to build the electronic boxes required into their vehicles.
The plan, which needs approval from EU governments and the European Parliament, would force countries such as France, Italy and Spain which have their own systems to adapt them to the EU standard which will use satellite positioning, rather than the microwave technology commonly used at present.
Here, due to the the current system being used for awarding roads toll operating contracts, motorists could end up with 10 different systems. Therefore, a lorry driver who will be able to travel thousands of kilometres across Europe without stopping to pay a toll may have to stop half a dozen times just to get from Cork to Belfast.
Under their contracts, Irish public-private partnership (PPP) road concessionaires are allowed to choose their own methods of cash and electronic tolling. Indeed, there is no compulsion for them to have electronic tolling systems at all.
"This is because we did not want to place anyone at a competitive disadvantage by specifying one system or another," says Brian Cullinane of the National Roads Authority (NRA). "There are problems associated with harmonised tolling in any case. There are legal and technological issues. For example, would a central clearing house like that in use by the banks have to be established to collect the tolls? What happens when it's impossible to collect from someone in a different jurisdiction?"
While these are very real concerns, it is understood from Commission sources that mobile telephone technology could be used for toll collection. Each vehicle would have an electronic device to which the owner's mobile phone is connected. As each toll point is passed an amount is added to their phone bill and collected in the same way as roaming call charges.
Cullinane does admit that we are unlikely to have the standardised technology available on time in this country. "We won't have it soon enough", he says. "But, if the new standard comes as a result of a European directive, it will have to be transposed into Irish law and the toll roads operators will have to implement it."
According to a spokesperson for the Department of Transport, the minister is committed to introducing the most up-to-date technology to ensure rapid movement through tollbooths without tailbacks.
"The minister has requested his Department and the NRA to examine all aspects of the use of free-flow systems for tolling in the future," he says. "The minister has had a number of meetings with the NRA at which he made his views known on the need to incorporate in future PPP contracts the use of the most sophisticated electronic tolling systems available. PPP contracts provide the NRA with the right to require tolling changes during concession period."
Conor Faughnan of the AA believes that European standard systems will be adopted by the toll operators because of the service standards imposed upon them by the Department and the NRA.
"It's a similar situation to that of catalytic converters," he says. "Everyone assumes that a catalytic converter is a legal requirement but it's not. The requirement is an emissions standard and the device is the best means of achieving that. I think that, if the Department and the NRA impose strict enough service standards, it will mean that toll operators will have to adopt best practice in technology and this will be the European standard.
"However, the AA would be concerned if Irish systems were out of kilter with the rest of Europe - we are against tolling but, if we're going to have a bad system, let's have a good bad system."
One fly in the ointment is a report that the EU Commission is about to approve a joint venture deal between DaimlerChrysler and Deutsche Telekom to collect German road tolls. This would give the joint venture a veritable monopoly of technology on German roads and probably mean that it would become the de facto European standard. Truck-maker Volvo, itself a major developer and manufacturer of electronic fleet management systems, says it may challenge this in the European Court of Justice.
A legal wrangle at this stage could well delay any standard well past the hoped for introduction date of 2005.
While not everyone supports road tolling, it's almost universally accepted as a method for cash strapped governments to raise finance for future road building and maintenance programmes.
As a result 10 stretches of Ireland's proposed new motorway network under the National Development Plan are earmarked for tolling.
Several European governments have indicated that new motorway schemes will have to be financed by some form of tolling.
Tolls are not without their problems, however. Toll plazas create points of congestion along the road network as cars queue to get through. The French have come up with one solution: when a queue reaches a certain length the gates are opened and all cars are allowed through free until the queue is eliminated.
Electronic tolling systems are fine if the only toll roads you drive on are using the same ones.
However, at present if you travel from Ireland to France and down into Spain you will encounter at least three different systems requiring you either to stop and pay cash at each toll booth or make arrangements in advance to prepay for the different technologies in use.