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Developments in transport telematics in Europe. The case of automatic debiting at speed

Transport in the UK and most other European countries, during the latter half of this century, has been dominated by the growth of private car ownership. All the attendant problems of congestion, pollution and accidents are conspiring to undermine the huge personal and social benefits that individuals and households derive from car ownership and use. Nor has this process run its full course; the UK Department of Transport in its National Road Traffic Forecasts (NRTF) foresee the possibility of the total annual vehicle-kms more than doubling between now and the year 2030, before some kind of "saturation" in car-use might be reached. The extent to which these forecasts are reflecting the powerful economic forces that determine future traffic demand or are themselves driven by current transport policy is the subject of much debate. More radical policies, such as tolling inter-urban motorways, congestion-pricing and traffic-calming in urban areas and encouraging the spread of tele-commuting could modify and reshape future travel-demands substantially, with significant implications for daily life. Throughout this transport "informatics" revolution, the Transport Operations Research Group (TORG) at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne has played a leading role. In particular, TORG has acted as the prime contractor in a 16-partner European project called ADEPT (Automatic Debiting and Electronic Payment for Transport), financed by the EC DRIVE programme. This is described and plans for future research outlined.