This forum deals with any kind of routing computation whether it is simple A:B-routing, calculation of isochrones, simple matrix computation or nearest search.
on april 1st, 2016 Belgium invents toll on various streets and highways in the country. PTV xRoute server supports calculation of toll in various countries for years but as the Belgian style of taxes is a little bit more challenging (tax values depend on regions) we had to invent some new strategies to cope with this. I'd like to use this thread to draw your attention to the Belgium toll in general, so feel free to ask questions around the topic if my little intro isn't sufficient. Anyhow: this topic is also worth to be checked in general.
Feedback is welcome!
To compute a toll based on a future tarif you can specify the context date of a routing by using the CountryInfoOptions.TollDate. This feature enables you to determine belgium prices even nowadays though the tarif will be applied in more than 2 months. If you do not use the parameter the xRoute server applies his current system date - beware of this effect!
If you just want to summarize national net values of toll you may simply take a look at the so-called TollTotals which contain just one price value per country passage. To enable TollTotals use CountryInfopOptions.TollTotals=true.
If you want to compute proper prices incl. official taxes you have to determine the net prices for each region provider. Belgium has seven of them. The following list contains the ProviderID and ProviderName:
201 = Flanders highway
202 = Flanders regional
204 = Wallonia highway
205 = Wallonia regional
207 = Brussels highway
208 = Brussels regional
209 = Brussels local
To request a detailed list of toll sections incl. net price and ProviderID / ProviderName from a routing response you have to request CountryInfoOptions.detailedTollCosts=true and aggregate those details (Like a SQL "SELECT ProviderID,SUM(Price) FROM TollCostInfo GROUP BY ProviderID").
I'll ask Product Management to provide an overview of available server versions and maps supporting this new feature as soon as possible! DONE
And here are some sample screenshots produced by a testclient.
Screenshot of a testclient with a route through Belgium. Date is 1.4.2016
List of all the detailed toll sections. You can see the prices and providers for each section.
List of the net prices grouped by the TollProvider IDs. You can multiply the net prices with the tax tarifs(Provider)
Just the toll totals. As the sample route is based on two belgium waypoints the list is based on a single element.
to use the exact toll calculation for Belgium, the upcoming TollUpdate Feb2016 is needed. Until then we already provide estimated toll costs.
The Toll Update will be available for the following Map Versions:
- PTV_Europe_City_Map_2016.1H
- PTV_Europe_City_Map_2016.1T
- PTV_Europe_City_Map_2015.2H
- PTV_Europe_City_Map_2015.2T
- PTV_Europe_City_Map_2015.1H
(It will be already contained in the upcoming 2016.2 and later Map Versions)
You are able to calculate exact total toll costs for Belgium with this toll updates with current xRoute 1.20.x Versions.
You are able to calculate detailed toll costs per Region with the upcoming xRoute 1.22 (Available presumably End of February 2016)
To compute a toll based on a future tarif you can specify the context date of a routing by using the CountryInfoOptions.TollDate. This feature enables you to determine belgium prices even nowadays though the tarif will be applied in more than 2 months. If you do not use the parameter the xRoute server applies his current system date - beware of this effect!
Small note on this: if you do not set the CountryInfoOptions.TollDate, xRoute will first look if you set a START_TIME in the RoutingOptions. If you did it will use this date for the toll calculation. Only if you have not set START_TIME or TollDate the current system date will be used.
