November 2002

As delivery companies grapple with the impending reality of the London congestion charging scheme, the IT industry is stepping forward with strategies for dealing with it.

Several suppliers of vehicle tracking systems including Siemens Datatrak and Minorplanet are offering to use their "geofencing" capabilities to monitor occasions when a vehicle passes in and out of the area covered. Siemens calls its system a "watchbox".

You can go further. Mary Short, managing director of digital mapping and logistics software specialist Kingswood MapMechanics, says an advanced geographic information system such as GeoConcept can quickly show which delivery addresses fall within the area. "You can then perform all kinds of cost to serve analysis on them, and evaluate alternative delivery strategies."

The scheme comes into effect in February. All vehicles entering central London will be charged £5 daily fee - even commercial vehicles. Organisations such as the Freight Transport Association have lobbied Transport for London in vain to have these exempted.

A surprisingly complex range of payment options is available for fleet operators, depending on how many vehicles they operate and whether their fleet also includes cars. The FTA, which is running a series of seminars to explain the system, has slammed "the cost, paperwork, bureaucracy and total futility of the scheme".