HCM City authorities have allowed the Tien Phong company to research and install a system to control and automatically collect fees from cars travelling to the city’s centre.

The equipment called OBU (photo: VNE)

Tien Phong company has chosen Singapore’s ERP solution for research and implementation. This firm must report its research results to the city authorities next April.

The company will make surveys, suggest the scale of application and give technological and policy recommendations. It will have to self fund the research process. If the Tien Phong company cannot make its report to the HCM City government, the research results or its project will not accepted by the local government and the firm will lose the right to pursue this project.

The HCM City Department of Transportation will cooperate with the company to conduct the research.

The Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system will be based on the DSRC 5.8GHz technology, using the vehicle identification and classification equipment to receive fee payments from cars which have equipment called OBU. Cars that enter restricted areas must have equipment this equipment which connects with bank accounts to pay fees directly. Cars without can hire this it in the short term to visit restricted areas. Cars entering the restricted areas without it will be identified by the automatic system and will be fined by traffic police. The estimated fund for this project is 500-700 billion dong (US$29-38.8 million).

HCM City suggested collecting car fees in October 2008 but was rejected by the Finance Ministry for infeasibility. The city raised the opinion again this July. The government gave the green light for researching the collection of car fees.

HCM City presently has around 400,000 cars, with a growth rate of around 100 new cars a day and thousands of visiting vehicles from other provinces.

PV