"Mizter T" wrote in message
...

On 06/11/2012 13:56, tim..... wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

On 05/11/2012 10:29, tim..... wrote:
[...]
well...

According to news out today, the system of collection will be "manual
post payment"

Quite frankly that sucks. In this era of modern technology that is
what
we should be using, not a Noddy system that we could have implemented
20
years ago.

How does it "suck", and how would you do it?

For those people who don't travel through often enough to have a DART
tag (and for those who didn't realise that they don't have enough
credit), having to actively make a phone call, or go online to pay, at
some point after you have driven through, sucks. Why does that need any
explanation?

I would make an automated post payment system for registered cars the
default option, that way you wouldn't have to make sure that your
pre-payment card:, a) had enough credit, b) hadn't expired due to lack
of use.

Why on earth are you so sure that this isn't going to happen?

Because there are no announcements saying so.

My reading of developments is that something just like you describe *is*
going to be implemented.

So why don't they say so then?

Free flow has been in planning for over 2 years now, and is still another
year away.

Why announce (now) a load of low tech, inconvenient, methods of paying if
you know that you are going to introduce a better one a few weeks later?

Note today's news:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/ar...ve-scheme.html

There is to be a coordinated national system of, guess what, post payment by
telephone with fines of 180 pounds for not phoning up to pay on time! [1] -
for Christ's sake!

I appreciate that this method won't work for 100% of customers but it
will work for 99%, unlike the options that they have made available.

I'm confused - are you talking about the present, or the future?

I'm talking about the principle of paying this way.

ISTM that if we are to have a database of registrations of car number plates
to credit/debit card accounts for post payment of tolls there should be one
national database for every toll that is collected (by a government agency)
this way (not a separate one for Dartford and another one for London CC
etc), so it will be easy for anyone who thinks that they might want to use
a tolled road somewhere in the country to know that they ought to register,
just in case.

So the only people who it won't work for a

a) people who want to cheat the system by driving through and not paying

b) A small section of the population who really didn't get to hear about it.

And as I've already said, I believe that once we have this database it
could/should be used for UK residents travelling on foreign tolled roads
also collected using this method, though I can see that we need some form of
protection here for cloned plates (and genuine mistakes) as I can't see it
being easy to persuade a CZ (for example) toll collected that your car
really was in the UK when they claim that you drove down their motorway

tim

[1] Yes I know, you can pay by internet instead,. It still isn't any more
convenient!

"Mizter T" wrote in message
...

On 06/11/2012 14:36, Mizter T wrote:

On 06/11/2012 13:56, tim..... wrote:
[...]
How does it "suck", and how would you do it?

For those people who don't travel through often enough to have a DART
tag (and for those who didn't realise that they don't have enough
credit), having to actively make a phone call, or go online to pay, at
some point after you have driven through, sucks. Why does that need any
explanation?

I would make an automated post payment system for registered cars the
default option, that way you wouldn't have to make sure that your
pre-payment card:, a) had enough credit, b) hadn't expired due to lack
of use.

Why on earth are you so sure that this isn't going to happen? My reading
of developments is that something just like you describe *is* going to
be implemented.

Just wondering, are you perhaps relying too much on some dodgy news
report, or taking its wording too literally? (I haven't read/seen/heard
any report on this issue in the past few days, but as ever one should take
reportage on such matters with a pinch of salt - little point getting
worked up about something that's inaccurate or unclear.)

You obviously don't live in the SE.

The plans have been widely reported locally in the past two days, by every
medium, because the department have just issued a press release about a new
consultation period. That consultation is just about the fines that should
be levied for non-payment, but necessarily includes the details of the
collection method that will be employed that incurs those fines. If
automatic post pay were an "approved" method ISTM that this would be there
as there is still a need for "fines" with that method.

and yes, I have been to the department's web site to check the up-to-date
details

tim

"tim....." wrote in
:

And as I've already said, I believe that once we have this database it
could/should be used for UK residents travelling on foreign tolled
roads also collected using this method, though I can see that we need
some form of protection here for cloned plates (and genuine mistakes)
as I can't see it being easy to persuade a CZ (for example) toll
collected that your car really was in the UK when they claim that you
drove down their motorway

There are a number of issues with this, though maybe not insurmountable
ones.

The first is that ANPR is quite difficult, and really only works
acceptably reliably if you confine it to the font, colours, format,
spacing and so on of a single country's standard. This has improved
steadily over the last 20 years but there is still a gap between the
performance of one-country systems and all-country ones[1].

Secondly, once you've spotted car ABC 123, you need to check with every
country in Europe where ABC 123 is a valid sequence to find out who owns
it - and there may be more than one match as registration marks are not
unique across Europe. A central European database would help this, but
there are formidable (= expensive) legal and practical obstacles to
setting that up and keeping it up to date.

Thirdly, you have to persuade the villain to cough up. As failure to
pay is a civil matter (at least in the UK) it is possible, but again
expensive, to pursue miscreants through the courts, but you have few
real sanctions at your disposal if they still refuse to pay.

However, your point about people claiming to be in the UK when they were
spotted on a CZ toll road is partially mitigated by ANPR cameras also
taking a 'context' picture of you with a bit of recognisable background.
This may or may not be of evidential quality, but quite a number of
culprits suddenly remember they were indeed there when faced with having
to explain that away.

There is quite a lot of enthusiasm (and some opposition) in government,
the EC, industry and trade bodies (hauliers etc) for doing this and a
number of studies have been undertaken, but to date the projected costs
have been too great to justify proceeding. But I think it will happen
in time.

Peter

[1] The original tender for the London CC scheme required recognition of
multiple alphabets including potentially Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic
(although thankfully not Chinese). I don't believe anyone put in a
truly compliant bid.

--
|| Peter CS ~ Epsom ~ UK | pjcs02 [at] gmail.com |

On Tue, 6 Nov 2012 17:03:35 +0000 (UTC)
Peter CS wrote:
[1] The original tender for the London CC scheme required recognition of
multiple alphabets including potentially Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic

That seems particularly pointless. Did TfL honestly believe they'd be able
to get fines out of some arab prince back in his home country or a kremlin
apparachik in moscow? If so a dose of cold reality is perhaps required down at
their HQ. Greece being EU they might have had a chance , but even then...

B2003

On 06/11/2012 15:06, tim..... wrote:

consultation period. That consultation is just about the fines that should
be levied for non-payment, but necessarily includes the details of the
collection method that will be employed that incurs those fines. If

There are no details of collection methods.

automatic post pay were an "approved" method ISTM that this would be there
as there is still a need for "fines" with that method.

Well, no, there is no need for fines if a method of payment has been used.

On 06/11/2012 13:56, tim..... wrote:


I would make an automated post payment system for registered cars the
default option, that way you wouldn't have to make sure that your

Do you mean 'automated post payment' the default for all cars (which is
infeasible), or only for 'registered cars' (which seems tautological?

pre-payment card:, a) had enough credit, b) hadn't expired due to lack of use.

On 06/11/2012 14:58, tim..... wrote:

Why announce (now) a load of low tech, inconvenient, methods of paying if
you know that you are going to introduce a better one a few weeks later?

Because many people will want the options.

ISTM that if we are to have a database of registrations of car number
plates to credit/debit card accounts for post payment of tolls there should
be one national database for every toll that is collected (by a government
agency) this way (not a separate one for Dartford and another one for
London CC etc), so it will be easy for anyone who thinks that they might
want to use a tolled road somewhere in the country to know that they ought
to register, just in case.

That is about 20% of the population.

So the only people who it won't work for a

a) people who want to cheat the system by driving through and not paying

b) A small section of the population who really didn't get to hear about it.

c) almost everybody.

"Peter CS" wrote in message
...
"tim....." wrote in
:

And as I've already said, I believe that once we have this database it
could/should be used for UK residents travelling on foreign tolled
roads also collected using this method, though I can see that we need
some form of protection here for cloned plates (and genuine mistakes)
as I can't see it being easy to persuade a CZ (for example) toll
collected that your car really was in the UK when they claim that you
drove down their motorway

There are a number of issues with this, though maybe not insurmountable
ones.

The first is that ANPR is quite difficult, and really only works
acceptably reliably if you confine it to the font, colours, format,
spacing and so on of a single country's standard. This has improved
steadily over the last 20 years but there is still a gap between the
performance of one-country systems and all-country ones[1].

ANPR is the system that is to be used for checking manual post pay, so
what's the difference here?

If an ANPR mistake is made with an auto pay system the wrong person is going
to get the charge instead of the wrong person getting the fine under a
manual pay system.

Secondly, once you've spotted car ABC 123, you need to check with every
country in Europe where ABC 123 is a valid sequence to find out who owns
it - and there may be more than one match as registration marks are not
unique across Europe. A central European database would help this, but
there are formidable (= expensive) legal and practical obstacles to
setting that up and keeping it up to date.

They have to do that already. If I want to use one of the various European
"vignette" payments it is no longer sufficient to just have the sticker in
your car. You have to register your number in THEIR database so that they
can check you have paid without stopping you. Whilst some countries
(apparently) manually check a video recording (or even a live stream) I
can't see that persisting too long and they will eventually all use ANPR
systems to check. There must be some method of working out what country
format a registration is in.

And is there the possibility of exactly the same number in different
countries? I really have no idea.

Thirdly, you have to persuade the villain to cough up. As failure to
pay is a civil matter (at least in the UK) it is possible, but again
expensive, to pursue miscreants through the courts, but you have few
real sanctions at your disposal if they still refuse to pay.

There is an EU agreed process whereby such "fines" are collectable by an
approved agent in the country of residence of the owner and that money
remains the "income" of the collector. I think the idea is that this will
all level out and that a CZ agency will collect as much money from CZ
drivers collecting "fines" in foreign countries as they lose from foreign
drivers racking up fines whilst in CZ.

Some countries have sub-contracted the collection of these fines, others
have not. IMHO not doing so is just laziness.

However, your point about people claiming to be in the UK when they were
spotted on a CZ toll road is partially mitigated by ANPR cameras also
taking a 'context' picture of you with a bit of recognisable background.
This may or may not be of evidential quality, but quite a number of
culprits suddenly remember they were indeed there when faced with having
to explain that away.

I'm sure that the technology exists to enable them to see that it wasn't you
if you complain.

It's getting over local administrator's CBA to check that's the problem, as
they will have little incentive to do so if there's next to no chance of the
driver suing them.

There is quite a lot of enthusiasm (and some opposition) in government,
the EC, industry and trade bodies (hauliers etc) for doing this and a
number of studies have been undertaken, but to date the projected costs
have been too great to justify proceeding. But I think it will happen
in time.

I don't see where these new costs are.

All of the systems I am suggesting currently exists except for the common
database.

At least 8 individual countries currently have databases of cars who have
paid to use their roads/motorways. They have a mechanism to allow drivers
(including foreigner) to register on that database. They have ANPR cameras
set up to to catch miscreants (or deduct payments from a pre pay account or
charge a post pay account). They (somehow) find the address of foreign (as
well as local) miscreants so that they can sub-contract collecting the
fines.

How can creating a common database (and an international method of
registering on it) really add significantly to the cost?

Peter

[1] The original tender for the London CC scheme required recognition of
multiple alphabets including potentially Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic

I don't remember Greek cars having number plates in Greek lettering.

I don't recall ever seeing Russian/Ukrainian/Serbian/Bulgarian cars having
number plates with Cyrillic lettering.

and I'm certain that I've seen all of the above with Arabic lettering.

BICBW

tim

wrote in message
...
On Tue, 6 Nov 2012 17:03:35 +0000 (UTC)
Peter CS wrote:
[1] The original tender for the London CC scheme required recognition of
multiple alphabets including potentially Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic

That seems particularly pointless. Did TfL honestly believe they'd be able
to get fines out of some arab prince back in his home country or a kremlin
apparachik in moscow? If so a dose of cold reality is perhaps required
down at
their HQ. Greece being EU they might have had a chance , but even then...

Bulgaria uses Cyrillic lettering (but IIRC not on their car license plates)

tim

"Nick Finnigan" wrote in message
...
On 06/11/2012 15:06, tim..... wrote:

consultation period. That consultation is just about the fines that
should
be levied for non-payment, but necessarily includes the details of the
collection method that will be employed that incurs those fines. If

There are no details of collection methods.

automatic post pay were an "approved" method ISTM that this would be
there
as there is still a need for "fines" with that method.

Well, no, there is no need for fines if a method of payment has been
used.

You need (FSVO need) a method to "fine" the people who haven't registered a
payment method (and don't manually post pay)