'Spies in the sky' tracking your car within 10 years

[BGonaSTICK]

So-called 'spies in the sky' may track motorists within a decade if the government goes ahead with controversial plans to manage traffic flow and introduce road fees for drivers, scientists have said.

The plans were unveiled in November in a report on future transportation policies designed to help cut traffic congestion. The plans prompted 1.8 million people to sign an electronic protest petition.

Monitoring would be via a combination of static cameras to capture licence-plate details, electronic tags in vehicles that would be read by roadside monitoring stations and GPS satellites to read on-board transponders.

Phil Blyth, professor of Intelligent Transport Systems at Newcastle University, said: "You will need 10 years at a minimum for a national rollout. I do not see many other options available to us to manage our transport system."

Blythe, head of a panel of transport experts from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said the technology is already available and has been tried and tested in various countries, including Australia and Brazil.

The London Congestion Charge zone uses static cameras and will begin deploying electronic tags beginning in 2010. Cities such as Singapore have been operating electronic tagging for years, and Stockholm's pilot programme becomes permanent in July.

An extension of existing GPS sat-nav technology would be a simple feat, panel members told a news conference.

Panel member Bill Gillan, from the Transport Research Laboratory, said he believed satellite tracking would eventually supersede the other technologies. Not only could it allow for variable rates at different times of the day to smooth traffic flows but it could also track distance and provide cost-effective national coverage, he said.

However, he added that cost is the key: "How do you encourage people to fit an on-board unit to their car?

"You have to juggle the cost, the charges and the penalties and offer some carrots as well as sticks." Simply making manufacturers fit tracking systems to all new cars would not be sufficient to guarantee rapid coverage, he added.

Panel member and transport consultant Jack Opiola said the thorny issue of personal data privacy could easily be dealt with by appropriate laws.

There are 30 million vehicles on the UK's roads, a figure forecast to surge by one-third within 15 years, which would increase the journey times that industry complains are already putting businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

Blythe said the government had to explain clearly to people what was at stake in terms of personal benefits from faster journeys and global gains from reduced greenhouse gas emissions due to fewer traffic jams.