Funding the transport upgrade

In order to fully understand the future stakes of road transportation in Europe, we must first consider that there are now 25 countries in Europe, and as many different situations.

The European Commission’s transportation directives have set a common framework, applicable to everyone whose purpose is to harmonise those situations in the future. Nonetheless, attempting to determine what European landscape will prevail would still only be a lucky guess.

It is, however, the permanent concern of any player in the area of transportation to try to anticipate such changes. They need to prepare and come up with the right answer at the right time to the needs of a few million users of the road and to major clients in charge of offering traffic conditions meeting demand.

Concessions: guarantee of lifelong performance
The scope of action of a motorway operator has always been focused on the market of concessions and PPPs awarded by governments and communities. To that market, leading player in the transport sector Sanef, in association with builder and banker partners, offers major clients the best conditions by which to complete, finance and operate their highway infrastructures.

The company’s expertise in its core business area – project schemes, proceed optimisation (pricing, traffic, sales policies), the supply of equipment needed for operation (tolls, traffic management, telecommunications), and the operation of a motorway – associated with its long-term investment capacity, provide the client with added safety for its project. Its long-term vision is indeed a guarantee for the durability of the concession.

Whatever the model chosen by the client (real toll concession or shadow toll, or PPP availability payment) such expertise and long-term approach of Sanef give true added value to its clients’ projects.

Tailormade toll and telematics solutions
Though the toll concession model has grown in many European countries, in countries where the toll culture is not very strong there are plans to apply the European directives by collecting a mileage tax on trucks using their national network.

In that type of market, collecting the tax is separate from the completion and operation of infrastructures. However, from an operational point of view, collecting a mileage tax is similar to collecting a toll, and here again Sanef is at the heart of its trades.

Sanef believe it can contribute much to this type of market. It has one of the longest standing experience of DSRC microwave toll collection in the European market, offers fleet management services using electronic transmission boxes based on the GNSS satellite technology, through its subsidiary Masternaut, and has a high performance management system for its subscriber clients, to whom it will offer an interoperable European toll collection service in the medium term.

Such expertise is a precious asset for Sanef when answering Electronic Toll Collection call for bids. 450,000 subscribers to the microwave toll collection and a fleet of over 25,000 vehicles using on-board electronic transmission services based on satellite positioning appreciate its expertise on a daily basis.

Sanef’s ability to design and manage electronic transmission systems and its operating experience will help it contribute tailored solutions to major clients wanting to implement zone charging solutions, whether locally or nationwide.

Apart from a toll price payment method, using onboard boxes based on the GNSS satellite technology (GPS currently and Galileo tomorrow) increases the size of the electronic transmission market by several orders of magnitude –from a few thousand boxes to a few hundreds of thousands – in a very short time. That change in dimension causes the market to enter in a virtuous circle, where many new services become possible. Such services include those to private people, such as car insurance paid on a kilometre basis, geolocated assistance, availability of local services, navigation and services to professionals, whether they be drivers (navigation, message-based task management) or fleet managers (hazardous material or high added value goods monitoring, client relation management), data management, and vehicle condition management (refrigerate truck temperature monitoring, telemaintenance).

The prospects open by this new field seem all the more promising, as the combined use of one single box to provide the toll function and provide electronic transmission services is not impaired by any technical obstacle. The advantage of this combination is well understood by clients, who are also in a thinking process to allow the raw geolocation data of vehicles to be accessible by all electronic transmission service providers.

For Sanef, this new field opens opportunities by encouraging it to place itself too on an electronic transmission service market that is still in its start up phase.

The high expectations expressed by the company’s clients, whether it be its ETC subscribers or the clients of Masternaut, Sanef’s subsidiary and a supplier of electronic transmission services, to have a single box, demonstrate the development of opportunities with strong potential.