The Research On The Ambiguous Path Identification Technology Of Zhejiang Provincial Expressway Networking Tolling Based On RFID

Expressway construction has been made great progress in China since the beginning of the 21st century. By the end of year 2007, the "5-longitudinal-7-latitudinal" national highway trunk lines, which totaled about 35,000 kilometers, had been opened to traffic; meanwhile, the total expressway traffic mileage in China had reached 53,000 kilometers. The expressways built in early years usually took the "integrative building and operation" mode; as a result, lots of toll stations have been setup on the expressway main lines, dividing the whole expressway network to many close toll areas. In October 2000, the "Interim Technical Requirements on Expressway Online Tolling" was published by the ministry of communications. Since then, online tolling has been implemented in 27 provinces (autonomous regions, or municipalities), covering 85% of the total expressway traffic mileage. The online tolling has broken the traditional "one-road-one-company" management mode, propelling the expressway management towards more centralization and networking; it also has improved the transportation capability and the service level of the whole expressway network greatly, thus contributing significantly to traffic energy saving and social resources saving, and bringing impressive benefit to economy, society, and environment.With the fast development of National Expressway Network, the problem of ambiguous expressway route identification has appeared in the practice of online tolling. If not solved effectively, it will greatly encumber the advance of online tolling and the healthy development of expressway network. Since the ambiguous expressway route problem has not been so intensified in early stage of online tolling, the "shortest route tolling method", or similar fuzzy route recognition methods, have been taken in most of the related provinces (autonomous regions, or municipalities). The exact route recognition methods have also been studied and tested extensively, but have not entered actual practice, as a whole.According to the new National Expressway Network Plan, the scale and density of the expressway roll network will be more complex in the future, making the ambiguous expressway route identification problem more difficult to solve. In such new situation, current "simple" tolling methods based on "shortest route tolling method" or alike methods will be obsolete sooner or later, since they will bring more confusion and cause more contradiction than before, which will affect the benefit of the investor and manager of the expressway ultimately. Therefore, the exact route recognition methods are set to be the ultimate solution to the ambiguous expressway route identification problem in the future.Based on the investigation and analysis of the Zhejiang provincial expressway online tolling network, together with the study and experiment of the major kinds of ambiguous route identification methods, a new solution to the ambiguous route identification problem of expressway online tolling system, which combines the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) active OBU (On Board Unit) technique with the non-contact type IC card technique, is proposed in this paper. While entirely solving the ambiguous route identification problem and the exact toll-splitting problem, the proposed new solution does not require much reconstruction of the current online tolling system, and retains the current tolling mode at the same time; it also does not need much cost, and can be easy implemented in practice. The proposed new solution has passed practical experiment in the current Zhejiang provincial expressway online rolling network.The technical standards of related equipments and the complete implementation scheme are also proposed in this paper. Together with the new solution proposed, they compose a solid foundation for the implementation of the "exact route identification system" of Zhejiang provincial expressway online rolling network, and provide a valuable reference for the solution of the ambiguous expressway route identification problems in other provinces (autonomous regions, or municipalities).