The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) is to begin a R28 million pilot project that could ultimately see all motor vehicles in SA being equipped with electronic tags and monitored on SA's roads.
The project planners envisage that such tagging could ultimately help fight crime, monitor speeding and assist with roads and motor vehicle licensing management.
The roads agency will begin the manual phase of its Gauteng electronic vehicle identification (EVI) pilot study on major freeways around Johannesburg in November, according to a Sanral official. The next phase will begin next year.
The study, which includes a radio frequency identification (RFID) component and an imaging component, will be conducted on a section of the N1 highway, between Johannesburg and Pretoria, as well as on a stretch of the M1, between the N1 junction and Empire Road.
In the study, around 3 000 volunteers will have tags installed on their vehicle windscreens and their movements will be recorded by RFID and optical devices installed along the freeways. Information from these devices can be monitored in real-time via the Internet.
Project manager Alex van Niekerk says the installation of the roadside optic-fibre infrastructure has already begun, but various tenders are still pending ahead of the November launch, including the main tender for systems integration and for the installation of detection equipment.
According to Pretoria-based iPico Holdings, the developer of an electronic number plate system using RFID tags, there is an extremely strong business case for the implementation of RFID-based EVI systems.
"Giving each vehicle a unique, tamper-proof identifier will help improve law enforcement as well as create business opportunities for local entrepreneurs to build EVI-based systems such as parking access or vehicle security," says Bertus Pretorius, iPico chief system architect.
Pretorius says helping authorities achieve the goal of stamping out vehicle licensing fraud would be one of the biggest benefits of introducing an EVI system.
Van Niekerk says the automated phase of the EVI study will be rolled out in October next year.
While the pilot study is expected to last six months, Sanral has a five-year lease on the Midrand fire station, which will act as the management centre for the project. During this time, the EVI study could be rolled out in the rest of Gauteng, raising the cost of the initiative to R50 million.
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