A few days back the Danish commission on productivity (http://produktivitetskommissionen.dk/english) investigated the influence of trafic and transportation on productivity. Their aim is to find ways to increase the Danish productivity which is significant lower than other comparable countries productivity.
One of the suggestions was to have increased roadpricing and lowered bridge tolls. I agree with the commission that these initiatives will release significant productivity gains, as congestion (dynamic roadpricing) will be greatly reduced - and that increased inter-country commute will be more attractive (we will certainly go more often to Jutland and to Sweden, if the bridge tolls became lower).
Bridge tolls:
The current lowest toll between Denmark / Sweden is around 130 kr (one way, approx. $21) - compare this to the San Francisco Bay Bridge toll which is $4 (both ways). The same distance in Denmark is approximately 10 times as expensive as in US.
One might justify that in US the potential number of cars parsing is much higher, why the revenue and hence the ability to pay back the loans is higher - but do that justify such discrepancy between toll? I don't think so. Furthermore a decrease of the tolls should be matched by an increase - I personally believe that there is enough potential to half the prices in Denmark which will be off-setted by a similar increase in people using the bridges. If that doesn't happen one could increase of years before the bridges are payed back - instead of having like 30 years left to repay the loans, one could have 60 years - is would still be economically (and financially) sound to do that from a well-run state as Denmark's perspective.
Roadpricing:
The commission suggest to have widespread roadpricing in Denmark - but the Minister of Transportation, Pia Olsen Dyhr, don't want to do that because there is no technology able to do this, and she doesn't want Denmark to be a guinea pig - and compare then to the Danish Travel Card (http://politiken.dk/indland/politik/ECE2177299/pia-olsen-dyhr-danmark-skal-ikke-gaa-forrest-med-roadpricing/).
The Minister is wrong on several points here:
1) The premise of comparing roadpricing to the travel card is WRONG.
The Travel card tender was won by Thales supported by Accenture and Microsoft in 2004/2005 - and is only just recently put in operation. Besides a lot of technical mess on the consortium side, a number of Public Sector inflicted constraints had made the system incabable of utilizing models from existing / well-working travel card models - like Oyster Card in London.
To mention a few:
* The fact that the Travel card should interlink and calculate fares between more than 16 different local and regional public sector traffic companices, with each of them having different zones and pricing depending on routing and time of day. Rather than to make a national standard for zones, times and pricing, they tried to "force" system development to cope with this complexity - while this being quite easy to handle today as technologyes have enabled complex processing and complex rule handling, this was not the case in 2004. Hence this have created and still create a lot of issues in the "rightness" of the calculated fares.
* Another consideration was that the use of eg. an Oyster Card model would require all to enter / exit at a few places - and the objections was that this would ruin the architectural features of the danish railstations by fencing them - and hence a check-in/check-out model was asked for.
A roadpricing scheme could be much more easier and elegant to use and maintain. Hence there is noway that the complexity of the Travel Card can be compared to the simplicity of roadpricing - unless of course one wants to make the system totally complex initially.
2) Technology do exist!
I guess that when the Minister says that Denmark shouldn't develop the technology ourselves it is because the past Government closed the Danish on-track program for roadpricing because the Netherlands closed their program due to technology issues - Denmark decided to reuse / replicate whatever the Netherlands would do on Roadpricing.
And the Minister is absolutly right - we shouldn't "develop" our own technology solution - we should use EXISTING, Commercially-of-the-shelf technology to build roadpricing schemes. And would it be complicated - no; would it be expensive - no; would it be privacy intrusive - no.
A simple model that could work.
The way to start, would be to start with the free-ways (motorways). As entry / exit is very well defined one could use the EXISTING billing and payment system at the BRIDGE Toll system - and then offer car owners without a "BRO-BIZZ" one for free.
There should be put up at each entry (down the lane) / exit a "BROBIZZ" scanner, that would record id + place + entry time. And then calculating the fare between an entry and an exit would be very easy - and able to discout "off-peak" or weekend or holiday ...
Starting with the greater copenhagen area would enable a swift and workable solution. And it can be deployed in less than 1 year, as it REUSE EXISTING TECHNOLOGY and it is LOW COMPLEXITY.
Models that tracks GPS and calculate a stepwise (and more "fair" for everyone) roadpricing will be extremely complex and require devices that somehow share sensitive location information about a citizen - so would not suggest currently this as a solution.
So - by doing it quick and simple, it would work.
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