Avian’s Blog

Today Slovenian highways switched from a modern contactless toll collection system called ABC to a piece of paper that you stick on your windshield and has to be manually checked by an army of inspectors.

ABC in all its tuned microstrip glory

ABC was a prepaid system where the amount you paid was proportional to the usage of the highways (well, to some approximation). The new sticky paper costs the same, no matter how much you actually drive. What is even funnier is that the speed limit through the tollgate is now 30 km/h while with ABC it was 40 km/h (and with the old system something actually had to be done while you drove through).

Welcome to back to 1950s.

This step back does have some bright sides though. One is increased privacy. Since the old system registered your tag on every entry and exit of the highway, it was possible for it to be used to track vehicles. An interesting step in the time when governments want to track citizensterrorists on every occasion. On the other hand you can already hear talks about Slovenia being the first country in Europe to adopt a new electronic system using satellite tracking, so this may not last long.

For people commuting daily by car like me the stickies also bring yearly toll expenses down to one tenth of what they were with ABC. Great for us, not so much for tourists just passing through our country and certainly not for Slovenian railways. And then people wonder why our public transport is in such a sorry state.