Hong Kong motor drivers get the shivers

Press, 9 November 1984, Page 13

Hong Kong motor drivers get the shivers

By

SUE BAKER

A small metal box about the size of a video cassette is sending shivers of alarm through the ranks of motorists in the world’s most congested city, Hong Kong. Within three years, every car in the colony will have just such a box welded on to the bodywork behind the front registration plate. The “electronic number-plate,” as the unpopular installation is already being nicknamed, is the key to a system through which the Hong Kong Government — employing British technology — aims to curb the island’s urban thrombosis. /It hopes to ease .the pressure which results from * the world’s

highest traffic density by the simple expedient of charging drivers for entering the city centre at peak times. It is a prospect which should also cause ripples of disquiet in other countries. Similar systems have been mooted in Britain — and rejected — as a possible panacea for London’s traffic problems. And it is British electronics experts who are gaining practical experience in setting up a pilot scheme for just such ,a system for Hong Kong. With Electronic Road Pricing (E.R.P.), every car will have its own electronic t|ox, taking about 10 minutes to fit to the underside of

the car behind the front numberplate. That box, allowing each car to be individually identified, will trigger electronic loops embedded in the road at key points around the city centre, on some 200 main routes and junctions into the central area.

Each time a car passes over a loop during the busy daytime rush — between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. — the “electronic number-plate” will be “interrogated” by (Se loop in the road to extract tire information

stored in the box. That information will then be relayed, by telephone lines, to a central computer, which will automatically compile information on the car’s registration number, type, the date, and the time the car passes over the loop. At the end of the month, the car’s owner will be sent a bill charging him for his use of city centre roads during peak times. The average bill for Hong Kong drivers could be from $lB to? more than $32 a month, increasing a

motorist’s annual costs by up to $4OO. During a recent visit to Hong Kong I could not find a single driver prepared to argue in the scheme’s favour.

Singapore already has a similar system, although on a much more limited scale, with 17 points at which a driver is charged for crossing at peak traffic hours. There is nervous debate in Hong Kong about how much information will be listed on the monthly bill. Will “Big Brother” keep track of the population? Will it reveal to a driver’s family where he has been going in his past month’s drivingTyt And the system could even in-*-

crease congestion as drivers U-turn at awkward places to avoid crossing the toll loop. John Dawson, of Transpotech, Ltd, the subsidiary of the British

Technology Group which has been contracted by the Hong Kong Government as consulting engineers, says: “Not all car journeys will be charged. The estimates are that approximately two-thirds of car mileage in Hong Kong will not be chargeable,” Mr Dawson says. “The lack box fitted on to the car is intended to be as tamper-proof as it is possible to make it, and the system is also designed for maximum data privacy.”—-Copyright, 'London Observer Service.