Electronic Fee Collection

EFC

Road user charging in transport is used across Europe for raising revenue, dealing with congestion and internalising transport costs. Concerns over escalating congestion, pollution and carbon dioxide issues, i.e. the sustainability of road transport, put even more emphasis on fair road pricing schemes in Europe.

Electronic Fee Collection (EFC) is an overall notion used to designate ICT solutions that automatically, and without stopping, collect road user charges. EFC systems allow effective charging of road vehicles and support a broad variety of pricing policies. There are three main technologies used in EFC today:

• Dedicated short range communication (DSRC)
• Autonomous GNSS-based systems
• Video-based charging (i.e. automatic number plate recognition)

There are many EFC systems in Europe today. However, most of them have been developed and expanded on a regional basis creating different variants between different nations. In order to reap the full benefits of EFC systems they need to be interoperable, allowing a vehicle to pay charges in different countries using a single on-board equipment (OBE) and a single contract.

For this reason the European Economic Area has adopted legislation with the aim to create a European electronic toll service (EETS). Interested EETS users must be provided with the option to sign up for a single subscription contract and OBE with an EETS Service Provider of his choice, giving them access to the service on the whole of the road network in the entire Community

• EETS Directive 2019/520
• Implementing Regulation 2020/204 on detailed obligations of Toll Service Providers and Toll Charges
• Delegated Regulation 2020/203 on obligations of users, classification of vehicles, interoperability constituents and NBs
• 8 CEN EFC standards are referred to in the EETS legislative acts

The European Union Directive 1999/62 (aka the Eurovignette Directive) sets out how EU Member States can charge vehicles for using their road infrastructure, with the aim to:

• establish an internal market in road transport with a level playing field and ensure uniform and non-discriminatory application of rules;
• strengthen the application of the user and polluter pays principles;
• contribute to the financing of road infrastructures;
• tackle congestion and the negative environmental and health impacts of air pollution and noise;
• boost transport decarbonisation by contributing to the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the EU’s plans to reduce CO2 emissions.

Implementation of this Directive and EU CO₂-based tolling are backed by EFC standards that specify electronic data and exchange of data related to vehicle CO₂ emissions.

EFC Standardisation

WG1

EFC standards provide solid technical support for agreements between stakeholders and form a foundation for the interoperability between EFC systems. Overall the standardisation of EFC contributes to improving circulation of goods, services and people in Europe.

CEN/TC278/WG1 is responsible for European standardising of the EFC application, whilst other international standardisation groups develop technology-related standards (such as GNSS and communication protocols). Most EFC standards are developed as joint work items with ISO (TC 204/WG5). In addition ETSI provides certain technical standards on testing that are important for EFC.

The current standardisation work includes defining application interfaces between equipment, information flows between EFC operators, architecture, security, conformance evaluation and test standards, personalisation of OBE, performance indicators and enforcement/monitoring support.

Standardisation in WG1 is divided into the following areas:

• DSRC-based EFC standards (including testing).
• Autonomous (GNSS/CN-based) EFC-standards (including testing).
• Technology-independent standards (architecture, security, information flows, etc).

CEN and ETSI are working closely together with the EC on standards that back the EETS and EU CO₂-based tolling. WG1 develops the standards that form the main technical building blocks for defining this interoperable service, and supports the notified bodies EETS coordination group (NB EETS CG). Much of the standardisation work undertaken builds on the work from European EFC projects, such as CARDME, CESARE-4, PISTA, MEDIA, RCI, REETS and the EETS Facilitation Platform.

Download

• European Standardization in support of EFC
• Introduction-to-EFC-stds
• CO2-based tolling – Eurovignette Directive and EFC standards

For further information please contact the convenor of WG1 Mr Jesper Engdahl (jesper.engdahl-at-rapp.ch) or the secretary of WG1 Ms Frédérique Rigah (frederique.rigah-at-cerema.fr).

Overview of standards

WG 1 has, jointly with ISO/TC204/WG5, produced a series of standards, technical specifications and technical reports. These documents can be purchased from CEN, ISO or national standardisation bodies.

Click for a standard preview (which links to the on-line store for purchasing the full document) or to download data structures (ASN.1 code) or abstract test suites (TTCN code).