The Land Transport Authority (LTA) will kick off installation of the new vehicle on-board units (OBUs) designed to support distance-based road pricing – or Electronic Road Pricing 2.0 (ERP 2.0) – beginning with fleet vehicles in November.

It said that the full switch to a satellite-based ERP will take place only after installation of OBUs in all vehicles is done, after the end of 2025. However, it will continue to use the current cordon- and point-based ERP charging system, and said that it has no “immediate plans” to switch to distance-based charging yet.

Fleet vehicles are defined by LTA as cars, buses, goods vehicles, taxis or motorcycles registered to a company or organisation. Owners will be notified by LTA (through letter, e-mail or SMS) when they are eligible for installation, with instructions on how to schedule an installation appointment.

LTA said that for fleet vehicles, owners may choose to have the OBUs installed at a workshop or by mobile teams that can carry out the installation on-site. It noted that mobile team installation allows for flexibility of time and location of the installation to avoid disruption of fleet operations.

From the first quarter of 2024, all other vehicles – the bulk of which are privately owned passenger cars – will have OBUs installed “progressively” in batches. From that time, newly registered vehicles will have OBUs installed as well.

The OBU will replace the existing in-vehicle unit (IU), but the current-generation ERP system, road pricing rates, and gantries will remain in place until at least the end of 2025.

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LTA indicated that the installation of OBUs for all relevant vehicles is expected to take 18 to 24 months, and a full switch to ERP 2.0 will happen only after all vehicles have the new OBUs onboard.

ERP 2.0 is the next-generation road pricing system, which is based on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) – such as the global positioning system – and will not require gantries, unlike the existing ERP system.

Owners of private vehicles will also be notified when they are due for OBU installation.

This will take place only at workshops, and installation is expected to take around three hours for cars and 1.5 hours for motorcycles. Installation of the OBU for private vehicles is free if completed within the two-month period stated in the notice.

Vehicles that must be de-registered before 2025, such as those with a five-year COE, will not be required to upgrade from an IU to an OBU.

OBU display now optional

For vehicles other than motorcycles, the OBU comprises three pieces: A touchscreen display (mounted on the windscreen), an antenna (mounted on the dashboard) and a processing unit (in the front passenger footwell). The processing unit is where the payment card is inserted. The OBU accepts only Contactless E-purse Application (Cepas) stored value cards, and no longer accepts older, chip-style Cashcards.

Motorcycles have a one-piece, integrated OBU, which is mounted on the left handlebar, with its own small touchscreen.

The three-piece unit for vehicles is the same as LTA stated in its original reveal of the new OBU in September 2020. But that after taking into account public feedback, vehicle owners are now allowed to forego installation of the touchscreen display.

Instead, they may pair a smartphone to the OBU via Bluetooth in order to access functions through an app, which include checking the value of their payment card or viewing traffic alerts and being alerted to speed cameras. Due to technical limitations, not all functions – such as adjusting the volume of the OBU notifications – are available on the app.

The touchscreen display will still be issued to owners, as each display is tied to a specific OBU set and cannot be used interchangeably.

LTA said that a fully smartphone-based OBU is less feasible due to security concerns as there are different models, with different operating systems and with security features. It added that its priority was for ERP transactions to be “carried out reliably and securely across different vehicles and vehicle environments”.

The switchover to ERP 2.0 

LTA said it will switch over to the satellite-based system after OBUs have been installed in all vehicles here after 2025. However, that does not mean that distance-based road pricing will occur on the same time frame.

Distance-based pricing means road users will pay for the total interval travelled on roads, unlike the current zoned system, where users only pay a charge if they pass a certain point.

LTA noted that after 2025, the switch to a satellite-based system means that gantries are no longer needed, with the current “ERP 1.0” pricing and zoning remaining unchanged. After the switch, the gantries will be “gradually removed”.

It added that there are no immediate plans to switch to a distance-based road pricing system, and that its current priority remains the smooth rollout of the OBUs in all vehicles.