Vehicular remote tolling services using EGNOS

The road sector is one of the major potential market for GNSS applications and therefore it is very promising for future EGNOS and GALILEO related applications. At present, traffic congestion places enormous constraints on our day-to-day mobility with over 10% of the network blocked, representing enormous costs. Improving road transport systems calls for systematic recourse to information about vehicle position and speed. Specifically, among road applications some requires guaranteed navigation services, often with high accuracy positioning requirements. These application can be implemented only if these requirements are met and this is not the case today with the existing navigation systems. EGNOS and Galileo will provide better accuracy of GPS and, what is most important, will make available the data integrity information, that is the basis to certify and guarantee the service. In particular the "Tolling" related application falls into the above category and, in addition it represents a very important commercial opportunity. The study conducted by Alenia Spazio, Next, University of Rome "Tor Vergata" and Aalborg University aims at exploiting the capabilities offered by EGNOS (in the near term) and GALILEO (in medium long term) to provide such new applications; specifically, an extended service concept of road tolling is addressed in the present paper, herein after indicated as "remote tolling", such to cover basic tolling service, but also additional "pay-per-use services" on motorways transport, as well as in urban environment (parking and access to restricted zones) Independent from the environment considered in the service scenario, common services applicable to each category of users are also considered like the distribution of real time traffic data. Other interesting services like the "pay per use insurance", that can be easily implemented by the same remote tolling service system architecture, can be a potential extension of the study. Today, it is noted that such type of service is considered in the user community of a real importance and at the same time also service providers and important insurance Companies are going to deep investigate this new revolutionary possibility in handling the car insurance issue. Therefore, it is deemed strategic at that time to consider this application in the service prototype definition process, for which particularly a service guarantee is required by further stressing the importance of using EGNOS for the service implementation.