quartix-three-vans.jpgQuartix’s award-winning vehicle tracking system has been updated to tackle London Low Emission Zone penalties. The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has designated the 33 boroughs of Greater London as a Low Emission Zone (LEZ) and will charge older vehicles £200 per day to enter it. Much of the charging zone runs up to, but does not include, the M25. All other public roads within the area, including small parts of the M1, M4 and the M4 spur to Heathrow airport, are included.

Vehicles entering the zone will be monitored by fixed and mobile cameras and vehicles that do not meet the LEZ’s emission standards will have to pay a charge of £200 per day. Penalties start at £1000 and rise to £1,500 for late payment. One in four of the120,000 vehicles over 12 tonnes driving into Greater London in 2007 would have had to pay the charge.

The Quartix Advanced Vehicle Tracking System is a fusion of satellite global positioning system (GPS) and GPRS technologies. A small unit fitted to a vehicle receives position, direction and speed information from up to 12 GPS satellites and transmits this information over the mobile telephone network, continuously, as the vehicle moves. Quartix’s servers process this information to display the vehicles as icons on a computer screen map shown on a web page. Operators and managers can see where their vehicles are, in real time, by simply logging on to the internet.

Critical or sensitive locations can defined as ‘alert’ areas and the Quartix system will automatically send text or email warnings when any specified vehicle enter, or leave, the area.

In the case of the LEZ however, the Quartix system has a special trick up its sleeve. The whole LEZ has been defined as a standard alert area and operators will know when a vehicle enters or leaves the zone, automatically. So, if they have not paid in advance, they will be able to avoid penalty charges by paying their charge promptly.

Quartix Ltd
Tel: 0870 013 6663

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