The contractor for the freeway electronic toll-collection (ETC) system could face a daily penalty of NT$500,000 if it fails to raise the usage rate of on-board units (OBU) to 60 percent by the end of June, the National Freeway Bureau said yesterday.
According to the contract between the bureau and Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection (FETC), the contractor was supposed to raise the usage rate of OBUs to 45 percent by June last year. However, FETC only managed to bring the usage rate to 40 percent by that time.
The bureau gave FETC a year to improve its performance. It also required FETC to reach an OBU usage rate of 50 percent by the end of last month.
However, the contractor again failed to meet the target, reaching only a 43 percent usage rate.
Bureau deputy chief engineer Wu Mu-fu (吳木富) said the bureau had informed FETC in an official notice that it had violated the terms of the contract.
The bureau would again give FETC time to improve, he said, adding that the bureau could start penalizing FETC in July if the usage rate failed to reach 60 percent by the end of June.
“It could be required to pay NT$500,000 per day for breaking the terms of the contract,” Wu said, adding that the bureau would start counting the total from the day the company received the official notice informing the company.
While some legislators have suggested that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications terminate the contract with FETC and make the ETC system a state-run operation, Wu said that was inappropriate.
“The contractor broke the contract and is trying to improve its performance,” Wu said. “At this point, the bureau can only terminate the contract by reaching a settlement with FETC.”
FETC said it had launched a plan in November last year allowing motorists to try the ETC system without having to purchase OBUs.
However, the results fell short of expectations, it said, as about 70,000 motorists had applied to try the ETC system in the past five months.
When examining day-to-day data, it was found that about four or five times more people purchased OBUs than joined the trial.
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