M50 barriers to go August 2008

A barrier-free tolling system will be introduced on the M50 from August next year after a €113 million eight-year contract to design and operate the system was awarded to a French consortium yesterday.

The decision was approved at a National Roads Authority (NRA) board meeting late yesterday and the contract is due to be signed by the end of the month. Work will commence immediately after contracts are signed. "This free-flow multi-lane tolling project is the first of its type in Europe and should, along with the M50 upgrade, offer service improvement. All revenue will go directly back into road improvements," said NRA chairman Peter Malone.

The successful BetEire Flow consortium includes the Sanef group which operates over 1,700km of motorway in France, and the French systems designer, supplier and integrator CS Systemes which runs free-flow and traffic management systems in France, the UK and in America.

The eight-year contract will see BetEire Flow design, build and operate the new system and the €113 million, plus VAT, contract is fixed, regardless of traffic volumes. This differs from the current scenario where the existing operator National Toll Roads (NTR) takes the majority of every toll fee paid. Revenue generated by the barrier-free tolling on the M50 will go towards the estimated €600 million cost of buying out NTR of its interest in a 3.2km strip of the M50 and paying for the upgrading of the route to three-lanes.

Design and building work on the new tolling system is expected to start early next month and a gantry holding cameras and sensors for barrier-free tolling is to be built just north of the West-Link. Barrier-free tolling will start on the M50 from August 1st 2008 and the West-Link toll station will be demolished shortly afterwards.

Vehicles planning to use the M50 after this date will be required to register and place a tag in their vehicles. This tag will be interoperable with other barrier free tolling systems in the State. A system of sensors and cameras will track vehicles crossing the tolling point. Unregistered vehicles will be given 24-hours to register before being charged a higher fee.

However, an issue remains with the enforcement of vehicles registered outside the State. At the moment, there is no method to enforce tolls on vehicles from outside the State and there will be no tolled lane for unregistered vehicles or those from another country. However, a proposed EU directive on database sharing for road tolling is expected to address this problem. Although the tender specifies a single toll on the M50, it also makes provision for the introduction of a series of tolling points if a demand management study of the congested orbital route recommends this.

This could see a number of tolling points introduced, with a series of different toll charges, based on the time and location at which a driver joins the M50 and how far they travel.

The demand management study is currently underway and is expected to be completed later this year. To avoid a repeat of the situation with NTR, the National Roads Authority will hold the rights to all systems and intellectual property introduced by the new operator, including all data and enforcement systems.

Mr Malone said the new contract would be a "customer-driven operation; not revenue generation. The contractors will be working directly on behalf of the NRA at a fixed price and the revenue generated by the tolls will be reinvested in the M50."

The NRA reserves the right to terminate the contract if the contractor's performance is deemed unsatisfactory. It also has an option to extend the initial eight-year contract by three years. Sanef has 40 years of experience in toll road operations. The group manages tolls on a third of French motorways. CS Systemes operates intelligent transport systems in over 20 countries.