Ease Traffic Congestion by Deploying RFID Technology in Toll Collection

BACKGROUND
In Columbia, private cars and transport trucks have sprung up. In toll collection, working staff need to calculate the toll by themselves. This way not only wasted time, but also brought chances of overcharging or undercharging. In order to ease traffic jams near tool booths, Columbia reached a cooperation with Chainway and applied RFID technology to achieve electronic toll collection, and to ease the burden at the toll roads.
 
CHALLENGES

• Due to the increment of traffic volume, manual calculation and charging clearly slowed traffic speed. Besides, it is error-prone.

• Slow toll collection seriously affected the traffic speed of road vehicles as well as citizens' daily life.

• It is a headache for the staff in toll station to summarize and calculate total amount of toll collected each day. The cost of time and man power is high.

• It is not conducive to the department's supervision and management because all data and information cannot be reported in real time.

 
SOLUTIONS
To improve the status quo, Expressway Authority cooperated with Shenzhen Chainway Information Technology Co., Ltd, aiming to eliminate the delay on toll roads by collecting tolls electronically. When drivers enter highway, they will be given a UHF smart card. When they exit, staff can use our UHF RFID readers to scan the UHF smart cards and at the same time the pre-installed application software can calculate the total amount that should be paid. What's more, GPS function integrated to the PDA helps locate the toll booth. And camera is available to take photographs of the scene. All data, photos and other information can be timely transmitted to the backend system via GPRS.
 
EFFECTS

• It improved Columbia highway toll collection system to be more informationized, intelligent and scientific. There was a substantial increase in both the charging efficiency and the traffic speed.

• Automated toll collection facilitated the operation of urban crowded freeways.

• GPS positioning and photo taking made it more efficient to deal with emergencies.

• All data, images and other information could be transmitted over the wireless network to the background system in real time. It became more convenient for administrators to monitor and manage toll booths.

 
PDA Configuration
P/N: C5000
Functions: UHF RFID, GPS, 3G, Camera