M6toll’s new £20m technology upgrade to boost business customer journeys
M6toll has successfully completed a new £20 million technology upgrade designed to make it quicker for business customers to get through the toll lanes, easier to manage online accounts and offer cheaper journeys for thousands of local routes.
A key part of the new technology upgrade is the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) tolling system. The installation of roadside ANPR cameras provides the capability to capture license plate data, enabling contactless and cashless payments for account customers.
This saves both time and money, compared to pay as you go customers choosing to make one off payments at the toll plazas. The ANPR cameras also help to ensure that traffic continues to flow freely through the toll lanes, making for a seamless, hassle-free driving experience for business customers, even at peak times.
With the ANPR system now fully operational, the M6toll team can now offer business customers the opportunity to move from the previous TAG system to ANPR. In doing so it has helped reduce the administrative process of requesting tags, postage and fixing them in the vehicles etc.
These operational efficiencies have been further boosted with access to an online portal, where account holders can track vehicle movements, add and remove vehicles at no additional cost and access assistance from the dedicated business support team.
Further additional benefits to business customers include the dedicated online savings calculator to find out more – which helps work out how much you can save in time, operational costs and other benefits.
Michael Whelan, General Manager of the M6toll, said: “With the £20m technology upgrade we are transforming the user experience for our M6toll business customers with more hassle free and efficient journeys on the road and a smoother and more efficient customer journey off the road, through easier management of online accounts.
By providing significant savings on journey costs, M6toll are looking to help commercial operators in these challenging times and help businesses to achieve operational efficiencies time and fuel savings and assist with driver welfare by reducing the amount of time staff spend driving on the road.
In addition, we have also introduced new pricing structure for account customers, which will help to ensure a fairer price for those businesses which are using the M6toll for shorter, local journeys.”
The new pricing structure is based on where you join and leave the road. The ANPR cameras will see when your vehicle joins the road, where you pay and where you leave, and your trip will be constructed shortly after. For business account customers they will pay less than pay as you drive rates, so there is a major incentive to get signed up to an online account.
As well as the new pricing structure for local journeys for account customers, the M6toll continues to offer HGVs the opportunity to use the left lanes and the wide load lanes when travelling on the road. These are further examples of the many benefits offered to HGV customers, which includes hauliers and logistics operators Maritime, Culina and Wincanton being the first to trial the ANPR system back in 2021.
As a result, the M6toll continues to be a popular route of choice for hauliers and logistics operators, with ever increasing numbers of businesses choosing it to avoid more congested routes such as the M6, A5 and A38 in the region. For businesses with time-critical delivery schedules, which may face penalties for failing to deliver on time, the M6toll offers a reliable, hassle-free route that enables them to meet deadlines and just as importantly customer expectations.
The M6toll’s popularity among hauliers and logistics operators is further demonstrated by HGV traffic data revealed by the M6toll data analytics team in 2023. The figures show that HGV usage on the M6toll (class 5+) has increased by 50.6% from 2019 to 2023., with many of the operators surveyed citing time and cost savings as key reasons for using the road.
