Tolplan’s experience in the Electronic Engineering, Information and Communication Technology, Operational and Financial fields are combined to design toll collection and toll management information systems that minimise fraud, record every transaction and incident in every lane, optimise traffic flow, provide management with reports on traffic, toll income, personnel activities, maintenance required and maintenance actually performed.

These designs include systems for conventional toll plazas and Open Road Tolling, as well as standardisation of toll payment schemes for contact cards, smart cards and Electronic Toll Collection (ETC), including national clearing to provide the road user with a single card or transponder and a single national card or ETC account, regardless of which authority’s toll roads are used.

The company pioneered the introduction of standard software and inexpensive off-the-shelf PC based technology in the field of proprietary software and specialised toll equipment in South Africa, resulting in significant savings for its clients. Great emphasis is placed on a secure system with which fraud becomes almost impossible, in order to maximise the toll revenue collected.

Toll system design and implemented experience includes functionalities such as:

• Payment methods like:
  • Bank credit cards (Master, Visa, fleet cards, petrol cards, etc.)
  • Toll authority issued cards
  • Cash
  • Electronic toll collection (transponders)
  • Contact or contactless smart cards
  • Cards for users exempt from payment
• Discounts for:
  • frequent users
  • card or transponder users
  • local users (living near the tolling point)
  • off-peak or night-time usage of toll road
  • or combinations of the above
• User interfaces in multiple languages
• Multiple currencies.

CCTV systems are the eyes of the tolling entity. It is used more and more to supervise toll collection at remote plazas, to improve security, to record class discrepancies and violation information and to monitor queue lengths. Fibre optic links are implemented to provide data, video and voice communication with and control signals to remote plazas. Video capturing systems record selected video frames of incidents occurring at the toll plazas to facilitate post event audits.

Tolplan has been responsible for the following services at more than 30 mainline and 40 ramp toll plazas in South Africa, Hungary, Greece, Malaysia, Brazil, Mozambique, Swaziland and New Zealand:

The involvement of the company in Open Road Tolling and standardisation is described under the South African and International Experience sections.