Communications: electrical – Traffic control indicator – Combined
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-28
2001-06-26
Pope, Daryl (Department: 2736)
Communications: electrical
Traffic control indicator
Combined
C340S905000, C235S384000, C701S117000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06252523
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The method and the system according to the present invention are intended for registering vehicle fees such as tolls for passing roads and bridges and for staying including parking vehicles inside toll areas such as city cores, so that the fees can be debited or preferably deducted from an amount stored in a pre-paid card.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It occurs that in toll collection facilities fees are collected for passing motor highways, bridges, tunnels and other vehicle transport passages having high construction costs. Thereby, an economic contribution to construction and maintenance costs is obtained. First, tolls were manually collected in toll booths which the vehicles must pass. Then, paying cards and gates were introduced which were temporarily opened by presenting such a card. The latest development includes that in the toll gate an installation is provided for non-contact reading of identification units on passing vehicles, so that vehicles do not have to stop. Then, usually, for the communication a microwave transceiver is used in the stationary unit and transponders in the vehicles. Then the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,739,328 Koelle et al. may be used. For registering the fee, an identity obtained from the vehicle unit is accessed making a debiting of the cost possible. A still more rational system is obtained in the case where the stationary unit activates registering the fee in the vehicle unit, so that the fee can be deducted from amount stored in a pre-paid card, a so-called Smart Card, with which the vehicle unit can be provided.
It also occurs that it is desired to provide heavily trafficked areas, such as city cores, with entrance toll collection facilities. In such cases the possibility of obtaining revenues is not the primary object but the most important object generally is that thereby a means is obtained of restricting the traffic in such areas by reducing “unnecessary driving” and a major reason for transferring from personal transports by private cars to public transportation services is produced. In the development of the method comprising non-contact registering of passing vehicles the interest of installing this kind of zone toll facilities has increased.
Within zones in which entrance control using fees is of interest, in addition to the problem related to dense traffic, generally parking problems also exist. It has been known for a long time to control parking by means of charges which are most often paid by means of automatic parking meters. Beside control of, in particular, long-time parking at locations placed remotely from the most frequented streets and places, some economic contribution is obtained to the installation and maintenance of the parking lots.
However, the system comprising parking meters has many disadvantages. Thus, they require a lot of staff for supervising; in order that the paying morality will be maintained and in order that the control will be efficient, each vehicle must at some intervals be checked by patrolling supervisors. Installation and maintenance as well as service of and collecting money from automatic meters have considerable costs and the parking meters often give an ugly impression in the general look of a town and in addition makes cleaning of the streets difficult. To a user they are uncomfortable to the extent that he often is uncertain of the length of the time period for which the necessary prepayment is to be made. A return too late to the vehicle results in a risk for parking fines and paying for a longer time than planned mostly results in unnecessary costs. An system alternative to parking meters includes areas or parking houses having pay desks at the exits, at which one pays for the time between entrance and exit. In some respects, this is a more versatile system. However, it can only be used to a limited extent in built-up areas, in which it mostly is necessary to arrange possibilities for parking along streets and on isolated, smaller parking lots.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is particularly directed to providing a rational system for collecting traffic fees within built-up areas, in particular areas in the center of towns or cities. These traffic fees can, according to what has been indicated above, constitute both entrance fees, which are registered for a vehicle passing the border to a toll zone, and parking charges, which are collected when placing a vehicle at an indicated car parking area, the charges mostly being dependent on time.
Often, an area in the inner portion of a town, for which it is desired to collect a toll when entering this portion, can be divided into areas in which the need and desire for restricting vehicle traffic is greater or smaller. The reasons thereof can be several, such as a larger or smaller trafficability, a larger or smaller available number of car parks or a grading of the desire of limiting disturbances from vehicle traffic, such as in areas having walkways. These circumstances result in that there is a need for dividing a toll zone for a built-up region into several subzones. A typical example can be that, starting from a city core, in which the need and desire for restricting vehicle traffic is largest, ring zones are provided, in which the need for reducing the traffic becomes smaller the longer the distance is from the core and at the same time the traffic in such outer zones cannot be too much restricted since they often need to be used for the traffic service of the core and the inner zones and for vehicles passing between areas outside the borders of the main zone. If tolls are used as a control means for restricting the traffic, it is natural for such areas, where the desire of restricting the traffic is graded, to obtain the control by taking higher tolls within areas in which the need for restricting the traffic is largest and a smaller fee for subzones such as peripheral zones. Collecting some kind of average fee, like in existing systems, for entrance over an outer zone border has appeared to be inefficient and also evokes a large resistance from the road-users. For influencing the traffic in a toll zone, relatively high fees are required but if they would be collected for already entering the border zone, for example for passing through, vehicle traffic which is not desired to be restricted to the same extent, would be charged with unreasonably high fees.
It has therefore been proposed that the considered area would be divided into subzones used in the aspect of collecting fees, by arranging toll collection facilities for passing vehicles at each zone border. The person which is to pass into the city core will then pass a number of toll collection facilities and will then be registered for a new fee for each passage through a zone in a direction inwards towards the core. However, such a system would result in providing a large number of toll collection facilities. Limiting the number of vehicles by guiding the traffic flow along some traffic routes would result in that some streets and roads would be shut off, thereby making the trafficability difficult, which is very delicate in built-up areas and which are heavily trafficked. Since toll collection facilities take a relatively large place and influence the general look of a town, this provides another reason for restricting the number of toll collection stations and, thus, also of toll borders. Thereby, the traffic control function will be reduced in order to make the installations reasonable.
The invention relates to a method and a system for collecting traffic fees, primarily both tolls and parking charges, by means of remote communication as has been described in the introductory part. The system makes a division of a main zone into subzones possible for allowing differentiated fees. The system permits the technical installations for such a system will be greatly restricted compared to the aforementioned proposed system having a number of toll collection stations for successively passing towards an inner town area. Since the installations
Combitech Traffic Systems AB
Pollock, Vande Sande & Amernick, R.L.L.P.
Pope Daryl
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