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Dodgy Toll Plaques


Matt

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1 hour ago, Islander said:

where as the right colour sticker can be checked at a glance.

I must admit, the logic in that sentence is undeniable Islander.

The existing sticker system has been derided by many as being antiquated, but the practical simplicity is sound.

Comparisons with the DVLA and road vehicles are quite inappropriate, since their diskless system is automatically monitored by ANR cameras in police cars and other roadside cameras.

These automatically recognise every passing number plate and check online for tax, insurance, and MOT, as well as stolen etc., requiring no interaction from the police officers other than responding to the beep when a number plate's associated records show a discrepancy.

Now that is a hugely expensive technology installation, with costs that could never be justified for monitoring just 12,000 or so boats on the Broads.

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Typical Forum response to a BA initiative!!

As Strow says, there have been a number of posts to suggest this and the BA taken to task for not moving with the times and now they do......!!!

The colour coding seemed to me to be a good idea but I shall no longer have to clean the residue off the hull I suppose. I guess the running ink was the straw that broke the camels back but hey ho, it must just be me getting old!!.

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But how will they know which Reg numbers to check on? Up to now, they could easily tell which boats to check by the omission to display a current toll plaque. Now there's no quick way to decide whether to do a check or not. It's progress, certainly, but what happened to "If It ain't broke, don't fix it" (even if it runs!)?

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I think you are right Marshman! last year when they were checking around our Marina, the ranger was making a list of those with out of date tolls, he went to his boat and came back a little while later, and only issued tickets to certain boats leaving others, plus the fact I was working on my boat and had left my plaques at home, he asked me about mine then 15 minutes later told me I was OK! so unless he phones all those boats through I'd say they already have the techno,, but as Regulo says without any form of Plaque how will they know which ones to check, perhaps they'll micro chip our boats and check on the way past,:facepalm:it's all bringing back my miss spent youth where I got away for years using a Guiness lable as my tax disc,,

Frank,,,

 

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Maybe we're all over-thinking the problem.

All toll plaques run for the same period, from April 1st to 31st March.

Therefore, each BA ranger has got 12 months to spot any untolled boats in his or her area of the Broads, and only needs to potentially check a suspected boat once, each year.

There are around 12,000 tolled craft, so each local Ranger would mostly see the same local craft, a proportion of that total, say a maximum of 3000 or less.

I would hazard a guess that they get to know their "pitch" rather well, and which owners renew, and which ones might not, further reducing the lookups.

Any newcomers that may be ignorant of the tolls will not even be displaying reg numbers, so they'll still be easy to spot.

Also, they could use a TV license tactic, by carrying a printed list of last years tolled craft that haven't renewed by the end of April. That will be a much shorter list, maybe only a hundred boats or so per Ranger's area....

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8 hours ago, Jonzo said:

You'd think so, but believe me that isn't how public sector IT procurement works.

It's not just a "thought" Jonzo.

I quite agree that IT procurement of solutions above a certain size or complexity can indeed be ludicrously onerous and expensive. I've had nearly twenty years experience of that myself, first as a Procurer and later as a Contractor. Some of the projects did indeed run to "six figures".

However, the task of supplying Rangers with a workable passive satellite list of valid reg numbers could merely be a simple regular DB export and flat file viewer, and indeed the facility already exists for Rangers secure remote DB interrogation via the web and WiFi, as Marshman has since confirmed.

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15 minutes ago, Jonzo said:

 

...Yes, you could build an Android app (which is sideloaded) that hits an API endpoint overnight and pulls down a copy of the DB into local storage and provides faceted search for the front line troops. And it ought to take a day to prototype and a week tops to polish. Will they do that? I doubt it...

Well you have said it and Marshman will have read it. All it needs now is for one of you to offer it to the BA... :hardhat:

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12 minutes ago, Jonzo said:

Yes, you could build an Android app (which is sideloaded) that hits an API endpoint overnight and pulls down a copy of the DB into local storage and provides faceted search for the front line troops. And it ought to take a day to prototype and a week tops to polish. Will they do that? I doubt it.

Yes, Jonzo, about a week, as you say.

A very simple project, and coupled with the already used live wifi lookup, a very practical and cheap solution for the Rangers.

Will they do that ?  .....  compared to putting out tenders for a "six figure sum" ? .........

Even though the BA are accused of wasting money on admin, the answer is surely quite clear......

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I would be very surprised if it wasn't already in hand, and probably even completed and in use, together with the Wifi application that Marshman mentioned....

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The Rangers can already check tolls from their computers - not sure what all the speculation is about?? 

And as Strow says, you only have to keep your eyes open for those who have NOT paid and on any patch thats not going to be too many. They already chase  up the yards that do not pay until forced too so its not really much of an issue - typical of a  Forum to try and make something out of not a lot!!!! All of you  -  go outside and do some gardening instead please!!!

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45 minutes ago, ZimbiIV said:

Why don't they just put a cheap camera on patrol boats to scan for reg. plates, automatic fines sent out for untaxed boats.

Ah! an  ANP system.

paul

I'm afraid there's no such thing as a "cheap" camera that can scan reg plates Paul.

The DVLA ANPR system is in a different league entirely.......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition_in_the_United_Kingdom

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Agree Strow but I worked on a system with, agreed, a very expensive programmer. This captured images at high speed and processed it, the camera was a line scan that only cost £300. The system was rejected because it would not reliably read a red number on a red background.

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There are a lot of "private" dykes and marinas that between them, probably account for the majority of private craft that are on the system, so a quick tour say mid week, say a month into the season, and boats can be checked, notices placed etc etc. 

You wouldn't need much data for all the boats that are on the system, however, it needs to be properly coordinated, as there might be clones, ie another boat taking on the same name and number as one that has fully paid. So Time date place of observation, possibly a photograph,  needs to be cross checked on a live system.

It's what they do on the canal system, they have found dozens that they have caught for non payment, and of course, it is fraud.

What the BA are loosing out on, for the few boats that do not have a valid toll sticker, and are reported by vigilant fully paid up boat owners.

We are the eyes and ears, but sadly, no longer the eyes in this case.

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Viking23 said:

What the BA are loosing out on, for the few boats that do not have a valid toll sticker, and are reported by vigilant fully paid up boat owners.

That is quite true Viking, and is/was the major advantage of the visible toll plaques system, especially with the clearly visible annual colour changes.

It could be fairly easily compensated for by the BA though, they just need to emulate the DVLA's website "Get Vehicle Information" facility, that has been running successfully for quite a while now.

https://www.gov.uk/get-vehicle-information-from-dvla

You just enter any vehicle reg number and it's manufacturer, and then the page instantly shows whether the vehicle is taxed and MOT'd.

It does not have to show any personal information, that would infringe our privacy, but it could easily just show if a reg number is currently tolled, and what type of boat it should be on, information that the plaques reveal anyway.

 

dvla reg check.jpg

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I'm with Marshman! they already have the means to check without the toll plaques, now someone will correct me if I'm wrong! but wasn't it only a couple of years ago that if you were in the marina the BA couldn't touch you it was only if you went out on the river? most of the marinas I know now insist you have insurance and tax, it's in my contract but I have no idea how many inforce the rule, the easy way is if you don't show the Marina proof of river tax then you don't get a mooring, it wouldn't solve it all but I reckon it would solve 95% of it,, and probably free up a few more moorings in marinas,,

 

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I didn't think there was such a exclusion? If your in the water it is deemed you can go into the river so need to pay up.

I also found out recently that if you have a tender on the back of your boat and never use it on the broads, even that has to be tolled!

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I'm not 100% sure Mark, but I think it's only the last couple of years they checked the Marinas as they were classed as private land/water, I seem to remember the ranger that checked our marina last year saying something like that,,,

 

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