Major tech flaw sees ACT drivers wrongly charged for Sydney tolls

An apparent major flaw in the technology used to charge drivers tolls, combined with widespread duplication of car registration numbers between NSW and ACT, has led to drivers being charged for trips they never made.

Motorway operator Transurban has apologised for the bungles, which it insists are rare, but it has not explained the exact cause of the problem nor how many cars have been incorrectly charged.

An investigation by The Canberra Times has revealed numerous cases where ACT residents had money taken from their Linkt accounts because their ACT-registered car had an identical number to that of a different, unconnected vehicle registered in NSW.

Typically, the amount deducted was not initially big enough to raise the alarm. The Canberra driver only spotted the mistake when a series of deductions were made.

Countless ACT cars - probably running into the many thousands - have exactly the same rego details as an NSW car.

Many of the millions who go through Transurban toll gantries have Linkt tags, but the rest are detected by automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras. These, and the automated systems behind them, are supposed to be able to differentiate between ACT and NSW cars with the same registration number.

That distinction is supposed to be made by the ALPR system, differentiating between the background colour of the plates, the colour of text, the jurisdiction identifier "ACT" or "NSW" and the presence of slogans.

However, in numerous cases, those systems have failed and tolls have been wrongly deducted from Canberra drivers' Linkt accounts or issued to them in the mail.

The Canberra Times has a dossier of cases where ACT residents have been wrongly billed for trips they never made.

Some drivers only noticed the mistake by chance, after looking at their own Linkt accounts and spotting bills for relatively small amounts for trips they didn't make.

Untold others may not have yet noticed that they had been wrongly billed. Canberrans without Sydney Linkt accounts but with identical NSW numbers may have been billed directly.

The scale of the problem is not known.

Where the ACT once had exclusive use of plates beginning with the letter Y, some plates beginning with the prefix have been issued in NSW since at least 2005.

On July 1, official statistics recorded more than 600,000 light vehicles registered in the ACT. They included cars and small trucks.

It is not known how many of them have exactly the same registration in NSW, but a random survey of cars surrounding The Canberra Times office revealed that half had exactly the same number registered there. One large, multi-generation household reported three of four cars having a NSW "twin".

It is a fair assumption that many thousands of cars could be vulnerable to being wrongly identified by faulty cameras.

In just one case, for example, an orange Fiesta in Canberra had exactly the same number as an orange four-wheel-drive registered in NSW. The ACT driver got the bill.

It appears, however, that the colour of those cars was coincidental, given that other cases identified showed major colour differences between the two cars with the same plate information.

In a second case, toll notices began arriving for a ute in Canberra despite no trips to Sydney having been made in it for a year. In a third case, a Yarralumla resident received a toll bill for a time when she was in Perth and her car was in a garage.

Transport for NSW said questions should be addressed to the private company running the toll charging system.

"These are questions which should be directed to Transurban," a NSW government spokesperson said. It distanced itself from the complaints, leaving oversight of the day-to-day running of the toll system to Transurban.

The following questions were sent to Transurban:

A spokesperson responded: "Transurban apologises for any inconvenience caused by the incorrect identification of the customer's license plate.

"Our tolling system is designed to distinguish between vehicles from different states and serves more than 2.5 million trips across its network daily.

"In rare instances where a misread occurs, we endeavour to rectify errors promptly, issuing refunds where appropriate.

"We are continuously working to enhance license recognition technology and encourage any customer who believes they've been incorrectly charged to contact Linkt for prompt resolution."

Many people have tags when they use Sydney roads (or the 21 other toll roads the company operates on in Melbourne, Brisbane and North American cities). For those who don't, the cameras and the artificial intelligence technology behind them are meant to do the job.

It believes its system can usually distinguish between ACT and NSW cars with the same number plate. Other characteristics ought to differentiate between them. Background colours and the text of the numbers and letters are different. ACT plates often have the slogan "Canberra - the Nation's Capital".

Transurban has trumpeted its cutting-edge artificial intelligence. It told the trade magazine iTnews that it "has built an 'auto-correction' AI model to identify vehicles missed by its e-tag system.

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"The AI model analyses imagery from automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras to identify a car's make, number plate and location, which is then combined with other customer data to determine where to send an invoice," iTnews reported.

For the cameras, the specialist magazine said that "images that are hard to read are passed to Transurban's team of agents to piece together the vehicle identity and bill the driver..

Transurban described its purpose as to "be the link between people, places and progress".

Canberra drivers can check their registration plate against the NSW database to see if a car with the same details is registered over the border.

If there is, drivers who have a Linkt account can check their transaction history.

If you spot a charge that doesn't match your travel history, you can dispute the charge via Linkt's website.

On Friday, one customer who was wrongly charged provided details to a Linkt chatbot and was informed an investigation would report back within 10 days.

If the issue is not resolved, drivers can contact the Tolling Customer Ombudsman.