Spain: Leader in Infrastructure Development

Technology

The significant growth of toll road concessions is in part due to technological advances of the past decade. “Tolling is now much more acceptable to the public. It’s much less hassle, less onerous, you don’t have to line up and wait,” says Samuel, publisher of Toll Road News. “You can just buzz through. And now especially with open-road tolling over a normal section of highway, you don’t even have to slow down.”

Many drivers have recently come to appreciate the ease of new systems, where cars with a tag or transponder, connected to an account with a deficit or credit card, can sail through the toll barricades without stopping to hand over money. The next generation of toll roads, already in evidence on a handful of roads around the world, employ a system of what are called gantries, which hang over the road and read a vehicle’s transponder. The gantries also capture other information such as a car’s license plate number so those users without tags can be charged.

“The assurances have to be very high,” says Reinhardt, publisher of Public Financing Works. “You have to provide the ability to take incredibly accurate video images of license plates, so the system will hold up in court. Also there’s the issue of privacy and security. This has to be a fail-proof system. The banker wants to know that you can toll and identify everybody on the road.” Privacy laws in some countries do not allow the use of gantries.

Cintra employed the first free-flowing toll road in the world in Canada, and today these systems have been developed in South Africa and Chile, where Spanish companies have employed them to great success.
The development of gantries is based in large part on defense technology—the ability to detect and identify objects in the distance or determine friend from foe—and many of the top companies developing gantries have been involved in defense research. The systems work by employing a combination of imaging, radio frequency, and laser technology to read a car’s transponder as it speeds by, and also to accurately identify vehicles without transponders. This last challenge has been the biggest one, but recent advances in imaging technology have allowed for the collection of license plate information at high speeds. Laser scanners are employed to recognize the dimensions of the vehicle for classification and free collection. 

The Spanish company SICE has been able to take advantage of its long experience in the field and extensive knowledge of toll-road technology and present complete packages to interested companies.  Grupo ACS used the gantry technology integrated by SICE in the first free-flow toll road in South Africa.

Telvent, another Spanish company, spends a significant portion of its revenue on R&D and has developed its own proprietary free-flow technology. In addition, Telvent is developing what’s known as Sat-Toll, a system of open-road tolling based on satellite systems such as GPS or the European system Galileo. This is the most advanced form of tolling in the world, based on an onboard transponder that communicates the vehicle’s position based on the satellite system. The location is then routed through a computer system that gauges the necessary tolls. Though no toll roads offer this system yet (it is being tested on trucks using highways in Germany and Australia), Telvent plans to be among a limited number of international companies marketing this new technology. “Thanks to our range of products, we’re competing internationally in a large number of countries, on five continents, with the top companies,” says José Montoya, Telvent general manager for traffic technology.

These toll-road technology companies have also developed the information systems necessary for real-time processing of the information collected and the database systems necessary for the management of that information.

Charging models for tolls vary: some toll roads charge different amounts based on the time of day (higher for high-traffic periods), while others may develop specific toll lanes that will provide faster access for those willing to pay a premium. Innovations in technology and financing have contributed to the success of all these models.