Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) is the use of various technologies to allow the manual in-lane toll collection process to be automated in such a way that customers do not have to stop and pay cash at a toll booth. For an ETC implementation to be effective, reliable and achieve maximum throughput and customer acceptance, three major in-lane/roadway components are required:
• AVI - Automatic Vehicle Identification
• AVC- Automatic Vehicle Classification
• VES - Video Enforcement Systems
Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) uses a tag located in the vehicle to uniquely identify the vehicle to the toll equipment. Automatic Vehicle Classification (AVC) uses various sensors in and around the lane to determine the type of vehicle so that the proper toll can be charged. Video Enforcement Systems (VES) capture images of the license plates of vehicles that use the facility without a valid tag so that the owners can be identified and notified that a toll is due. All of these systems are tied together by what is commonly referred to as a "lane controller" and is supplied to the market by a number of ETC-dedicated companies.
Scirocco offers an AVI system for ETC that is characterized by large lane capacity by means of fundamentally good reading range and -speed performance, in combination with good economy thanks to a system architecture that allows reader sharing between up to four different lanes and a vendor-independent architecture that support tags populations with chips of different brands/types.
Anti-fraud facilies include encrypted tag serialisation and optional in-tag vehicle class and other info, as well as break-on-removal sticker tags, with individual printing of vehicle classes, logotypes and barcodes/serial numbers.