Product release: Toll billing from vehicle GPS traces

Tollguru released GPS traces to Toll API that allows fleets, logistic companies and ride-share, and car rentals to calculate tolls from GPS traces. The companies can upload their GPS traces (as CSV files) to the toll API for toll billing for the GPS trace.

The GPS traces to Toll API is currently being used by companies to bill their customers immediately following a trip instead of waiting to receive bills from tolling agencies. In addition, the companies use the toll information to reconcile toll bills from billing agencies.

In the first stage, a route polyline is constructed from the GPS traces. As you know, the GPS traces can be pretty sparse (say the fleet GPS reading is every three minutes) and can have measurement errors. Therefore, Tollguru first constructed a route polyline specific to the vehicle type. For example, express lanes and general purpose lanes may be contiguous and 5-axle semi may not be allowed to travel on the express lane. Therefore, the route polyline for the 5-axle semi may be different than a taxi sedan.

Tollguru GPS traces to Toll API allows fleets, car rentals and ride-share firms to estimate toll costs for billing operations.

The following map shows shows GPS traces (as pink diamonds) and the route that the truck took as purple polyline.

When you zoom in, you see that the GPS coverage was sparse at many locations.

You can see the time stamps for the GPS tracks in the following figure. Time stamps are critical information since tolls depend on time at some locations.

You will see that the truck traveled eastbound from San Francisco area towards Antioch with timestamps being recorded at 3:34 PM, 3:37 PM, 3:49 PM, 3:52 PM, 4:04 PM (going north) and so on. The truck heads back from Sacramento area. The tolls are returned for the GPS tracks (even for locations where tolls change based on time of the day).

A curl POST request is of the following manner:

curl --request POST -H “x-api-key:Your-key” -- data-binary “@/path/to/file/xx.csv”https://dev.tollguru.com/beta00/calc/route/upload?vehicleType=5AxlesTruck&vehicleName=myTruck&height=vehicleHeight&weight=vehicleWeight

The tolls are returned based on payment types such as transponders (e.g. E-ZPass, TxTag, etc.), cash, license plate toll (Pay by Mail, Pay by Plate etc.), Prepaid card (e.g. Nexpress, Nexus Card, etc.) and credit card in the specific currency. For example, tolls in United States are returned in dollars, Mexico in Mexican Peso, etc by default. The tolls are specific to vehicle specified. If the vehicle travels on a toll road (such as Pennsylvania turnpike) where the tolls depend on axles and vehicle weight, tolls are returned for the specific weight.

Please get in touch with us at api@tollguru.com if you’d like to schedule a demo or to integrate GPS traces to Toll API in your product. You can upload CSV files with several hundreds thousands GPS traces and receive tolls in a few seconds.

Tollguru calculates tolls from GPS traces for all toll roads, bridges, and tunnels in the United States, Canada, Mexico and India for all vehicle types. Tollguru provides smart toll exchange and navigation platform.

Tollguru mapping service is designed for real America — where both costs and times figure in route decisions. Tollguru shows the cheaper routes not shown by any other mapping applications such as Google maps, Apple maps, Waze, HERE maps, Mapquest, OpenStreetMap, Scout GPS, Garmin, etc. Unlike other mapping applications, our routes consider two vectors — travel time and travel cost (fuel and tolls) to provide a real-time decision platform.