Source: Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - Spies in the sky may track motorists in Britain within a decade if the government goes ahead with controversial plans to introduce road user charging schemes, scientists said on Tuesday. The plans were unveiled in a report on future transport policy in November as a way of cutting congestion and prompted 1.8 million people to sign an electronic protest petition.

Monitoring would be via a combination of static cameras to capture license plate details, electronic tags in vehicles that would be read by roadside monitoring stations and global positioning system satellites to read on-board transponders. “You will need 10 years at a minimum for a national rollout,” Phil Blyth, professor of Intelligent Transport Systems at Newcastle University, told reporters. “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 was already available and had been tried and tested in various countries including Australia and Brazil. [more]