Prague, 1 December 2020 - Exactly a year ago, a satellite toll system for vehicles with a maximum permissible weight of over 3.5 tons was successfully launched. Thanks to massive measures, the world's first generational replacement of the toll system took place without major traffic complications and without any downtime in toll collection. The Czech Republic saved approximately 1 billion crowns in operation over the period of 12 months.
"A year ago, the Czech Republic acquired a cutting-edge toll system. Without any trouble it has undergone test operation, launch and operation in the challenging year affected by the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite a major drop in traffic in April and May this year, we expect this year's toll collection to exceed the record of 11 billion crowns,” said Matej Okáli, CzechToll CEO.
A consortium of CzechToll and SkyToll designed, built and commissioned the new toll system within 14 months of signing the contract. As part of the partnership, SkyToll delivered a technical solution in which it used ten years of experience from the successful operation of the satellite toll system in Slovakia. The total cost of building the new toll system reached 1.945 billion CZK excluding VAT.
The launch of the new toll system was accompanied in December 2019 by extraordinary measures. While carriers from the Czech Republic had already registered 93 percent of their vehicles before the system was launched, foreign drivers planned to register almost 150,000 vehicles at the border upon arrival to the Czech Republic. CzechToll doubled the capacity of registration points at border crossings and also performed registration at rest areas outside the Czech border. The PPF Group (100% owner of CzechToll) invested more than CZK 60 million in extraordinary measures in excess of the concluded contract.
"Thanks to the extraordinary activity of Czech carriers and the measures taken, we managed to launch the new toll system without major traffic complications. We recorded sudden formation of queues on the D2 and D8 motorways, but their length did not exceed 1 km in any case. The waiting time of carriers who left their registration at the last minute did not exceed 2 hours, " added Matej Okáli.
More than 100 companies from the Czech Republic participated in the new toll system design and construction. On-board units (OBUs) were fully developed in the Czech Republic as well, including their technical design, plastics moulding, electronics assembly and software programming to complete assembly of the final units. To this day more than 463 thousand of them have been issued to carriers.
Interesting statistics after 12 months of live operation of the CzechToll satellite toll system:
- the system recorded 950 million toll transactions
- vehicles drove more than 3.2 billion kilometres on toll roads
- 60 control gantries evaluated the passage of 397 million vehicles - the gantries checked 66.5 million vehicles in the category over 3.5 tons and revealed 300,000 toll incidents
5 busiest sections in 12 months of live operation (passages of vehicles subject to toll payment):
- section D01-032 (Brno-centre - Brno-south 1) on the D1 motorway: 2,623,519 passages
- section D01-032 (Brno-south 1 - Brno-centre) on the D1 motorway: 2,581,094 passages
- section D01-005 (Modletice - Doubravice) on the D1 motorway: 2,519,702 passages
- section D01-005 (Doubravice - Modletice) on the D1 motorway: 2,488,366 passages
- section D01-031 (Brno-centre - Brno-west) on the D1 motorway: 2,230,391 passages
