Motorists face spy in sky monitoring

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - Spies in the sky may track motorists 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 licence 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 Blythe, 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.

The London congestion charge zone uses static cameras and will bring in electronic tags from 2010. Cities such as Singapore have been operating electronic tagging for years and Stockholm's pilot scheme becomes permanent in July.

Extension of existing GPS SatNav technology would be a simple feat, panel members told a news conference.

Panel member Bill Gillan from the Transport Research Laboratory said he believed that eventually satellite tracking would supersede the other technologies.