Electronic Fee Collection

In many countries electronic road tolling systems are being used but, although many of them use similar technologies, few of them are compatible at present. This leads to inefficiencies in the operation of such systems and frustration among drivers.

To address such issues in Europe, the European Commission has published a Directive on Electronic Fee Collection, which emphasizes the need for interoperability of systems. The Directive (2004/52/EC) proposes to introduce the European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) that makes it mandatory for fee collection systems to use one or more of the following technologies:

• Satellite positioning
• Mobile communications using the GSM and GPRS standards
• 5.8 GHz microwave technologies (DSRC).

Furthermore, such systems should be interoperable and based on open and public standards, available on a non-discriminatory basis to all system suppliers.

ETSI is responsible for developing various standards in response to the Mandate M/338 issued to ETSI, CEN and CENELEC by the European Commission in support of Interoperability of electronic road tolling systems. Along with the development of two multipart standards an ETSI Special Task Force (STF 282) has produced in close co-operation with CEN test specifications which focus on the 5,8 GHz Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) technology:

• European Standard EN 300 674 - Road Transport and Traffic Telematics (RTTT); DSRC transmission equipment (500 kbit/s / 250 kbit/s) operating in the 5.8 GHz Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. Part 2 of this European Standard is the Harmonized Standard that may be used to demonstrate compliance of roadside equipment and on-board units to the European Commission's R&TTE Directive (1999/5/EC)
• Technical Specification TS 102 486 - Test specifications for DSRC transmission equipment.

External links

• CEN has developed the DSRC base standards, upon which the ETSI work is based
• Technical Committee TC 204 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is working on Intelligent Transport Systems, and its TC22 is working on in-car equipment
• The ICT Standards Board has an Intelligent Transport Systems Steering Group.

The following is a list of recently published and frequently downloaded standards. Please use the ETSI Work Programme to find further related standards.