Appian Technology PLC

Congestion Charging

A growing application for ANPR is road user and congestion charging. Talon can be used as an accurate number plate reader, logging an image of the vehicle along with a time and date stamp.

In the case of London Congestion's charging scheme, the ANPR result is cross checked against a stored database in order to verify payment or eligibility for discounts and exemption. At the end of charging hours, a reconciliation process takes place to eliminate matching records, ie the number plate reads with the payments made. This means that a vast majority of images recorded are deleted without ever having been scrutinised by the human eye. If there is no match, the DVLA provides a list of registered keepers associated with those vehicles and then penalty charges are issued.