Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co., Ltd. (FETC) was founded in 2004, is awarded by Taiwanese Government to build and operate the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) System for the nationwide freeways, and is responsible for the Taiwan ETC total solution, including front-end and back-end systems as well as business model, from planning, designing, building, testing, and operation. |
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The Year 2004 : the Private Sector in a new BOT Model
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In 2004, Freeway Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications is a statuary body tasked with overseeing the management of the national freeway network. To implement equity and consistency in toll fees, and improve administrative efficiency, Freeway Bureau has adopted public-private-partnership (PPP) approach to designate private sector to establish and operate ETC system through granting build-operate-transfer (BOT) concession right of 20 years, thus the creativity and efficiency of private sector can be introduced to expedite the development of ETC policy. FETC is one of over 200 affiliated companies of Far Eastern Group (FEG), which is a major conglomerate in Taiwan with business ranging in 10 various industries. FETC is awarded by the Freeway Bureau to build and operate the ETC system and service for nationwide freeways in Taiwan from 2004 to 2025.
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The Year 2006-2012 : Introduced flat-rate pay-per-use IR DSRC ETC
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In 2006, FETC successfully launched flat-rate pay-per-use ETC among 23 toll plazas with IR DSRC technology, and the utilization rate had remained at approximately 40% for years, which was not sufficient to implement the policy – achieving a distance-based and multi-lane free flow (MLFF) nationwide ETC system.
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The Year 2012-2014: Migrated from IR DSRC to RFID, from Barrier Base to MLFF
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Therefore, RFID was introduced to Taiwanese road users later on in 2012 and with a rapid growth of public enrolment. The ETC usage rate accelerated from 43% to 94% from May 2012 to Jan 2014 and the system was compatible with both IR DSRC and RFID coexisting operation. This 1.5-years migration process with well-planned rollout strategy and incentive programs allow sufficient ETC penetration and society readiness for Freeway Bureau and FETC introducing MLFF with 319 gantries to road users on December 30th 2013. All the efforts to seamless migration not only from IR DSRC on-board-unit (OBU) to RFID tag, but also from barrier-based tolling to MLFF have paid off. Currently more than 7 million users in Taiwan benefit from the ETC with more than 6 billion accumulated transactions.
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The Year 2014-2016 : the Only ETC System Recognized by IBTTA, ITS World Congress and IRF
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FETC’s exemplary performance is recognized by the most international awards topping other ETC systems worldwide. What matters is not only how it functions, but more importantly why it functions well, which is about the principles of the system, the ease of use, the low cost to users, the high rate of penetration, the system integration, public acceptability, fairness in pricing, and near perfect accuracy.
It has to be mentioned Taiwan ICT Industry plays key role, which makes Taiwanese ETC System different. It was built in a vision of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) from the very beginning, allowing road infrastructure and tolling system to achieve the ultimate goal - a sustainable business from Smart Highway to Smart Nation.
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Up to the Present: the Project Delivery Partner from Operator’s Point of View
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Being the national tolling operator with the proven enterprise architecture framework, FETC has learned from previous experiences to be proficient in estimation of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI) for managing financial risks when a country needs to implement new system and migrate from previous one.
The development of business-process-design (BPD) and end-to-end architecture with open standard are FETC’s strong suit as well, which realizes non only the customer-oriented operation and service excellence, but a robust system to reduce MLFF bad debt for concessionaires or agencies.
Certainly, there is domain knowledge for scoping a nationwide system which can be applied to other foreign countries’ contexts and avoid them undergoing unnecessary trial and error. Up to the present, FETC acts as project delivery partners with public sectors, investment banks, and private concessionaires in Vietnam, Philippines, and Kazakhstan, and is in the process of partnering collaboration in Indonesia, India, and Bosnia and Herzegovina etc. |
