The 13th Annual Road User Charging Conference is here! In this feature, meet some of the speakers that will be taking part in the two-day event. Day one
Chairperson
Wouter Van Haaften
Senior Researcher, University of Amsterdam/Faculty of Law
Starting from a civil and fiscal legal background Wouter van Haaften has been involved in Road User Charges at the Dutch Ministry of Finance since 1993. He has lived through all attempts to introduce
RUC in the Netherlands. First he negotiated the Eurovignette Treaty that led to the introduction of the vignette in the Netherlands in 1995. In 2001-2002 he was member of the steering committee for the
Dutch KM Charge on behalf of the tax administration. In 2003 Germany stepped out of the Eurovignette and he became responsible for taking over the collective part of the Eurovignette system by the Dutch tax Administration. In 2006 and 2007 he led the preparations for a new electronic Eurovignette, introducing one single service provider system for all five Member States. In 2007 he left the civil service to become a researcher and consultant operating on the interfaces between market and government, between ICT/organization and government and between policy making and eventual operations.
Currently he is a senior researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam, and consultant in the field of RUC and ITS.
Bart Dewandeleer
Vice President, VIAPASS
Bart Dewandeleer obtained a Master in Commercial Engineering at the Catholic University in Leuven. In 2006, he joined the department of Finance of the Flemish Region as budgetary advisor. When Kris
Peeters, Minister-president of the Government of Flanders, took office in 2008, he asked Bart to become Councellor Budgetary and Fiscal Affairs. In the same year Bart obtained a Master in Public
Management at the University of Leuven. In 2009, Mr Dewandeleer became president of the Interregional Political Coordination Platform (IPCP) for road pricing. Mr Dewandeleer has since been
appointed Vice President of Viapass, the road charging project of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels.
Zoltan Varga
Director of Road Charging, National Toll payment Services
Zoltán joined the State Motorway Management Company of Hungary (now National Toll Payment Services) in 2011, after he spent almost 17 years in the vehicle financing business with companies like
General Motors, BMW and Scania. As director of road charging, his major task was in his new position to restructure the directorate, change the territorial split of the different departments and reorganize them in line with the main processes and work-flows of the applied e-vignette road charging in Hungary.
Successfully completing this task, the next challenge was by maintaining the service level in the e-vignette system to develop and extend the organization to make it ready and available for the implementation of the HU-GO distance based e-toll system, on 6,500 km road network of Hungary. Zoltan currently holds the position of professional consultant at NTPS and also acts as the general manager of Toll Service PLC, the 100% subsidiary of NTPS
Tone Hardeland
Assistant Director General, Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications
Tone Hardeland, Assistant Director General, Department of Public Roads and Traffic Safety, Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications. Tone Hardeland is Assistant Director General in the
Department of Public Roads and Traffic Safety in the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications. Tone is in charge of the ongoing Reform of the Norwegian Toll Collection System.
She has 20 years of experience in transport policies involving transport and environment, international policy making as well as tolling policy among other issues.
Hubert Resch
Managing Director, ASFiNAG
Hubert Resch is managing director of ASFINAG European Toll Service GmbH, subsidiary of ASFINAG, Austria’s motorway operator. Since 2013 he is also coordinator of the EC/TEN-Project “Regional European Electronic Toll Service (REETS)”. Hubert graduated from the University of Vienna (Law) in 1995 and was granted the Doctor in Law in 2002. He was assistant professor at the Department of
Public Law at the University of Business Administration in Vienna. Hubert worked as an associate at Freshfields, he was admitted to the Austrian Bar in 2006. In 2008 he became Head of the Legal
Department of ASFINAG, since 2009 he is managing director at ASFINAG.
Vicki Berger
Chairman, Oregon’s Road user Fee Task Force
As an elected official serving 12 years in the Oregon Legislature, Vicki Berger provided political and policy leadership for the development of OreGo. Her areas of expertise include tax policy, transportation
and economic development. Currently, she serves as Chairperson of the Oregon Road User Fee Task Force. This committee oversees the implementation of the OreGo program through the Oregon
Department of Transportation and provides the road map for further expansion of the road user charge system in Oregon. OreGo is the first fully implemented road user charge system for light vehicles in the
United States. Using modern technology and third party vendors, OreGo drivers can choose from a number of payment and privacy options to pay a per mile charge instead of the state tax on gasoline
Day 2
Chairperson
Keith Mortimer
Chairman, RUC IG, ITS UK
Keith Mortimer is an independent specialist in Intelligent Transport Systems, leading and contributing to telematics and tolling projects in the UK and internationally, bringing more than 25 years’ experience in
technology-based, globally diverse business streams. He is an active supporter of ITS (UK) and the Chairman of the ITS UK Road User Charging Interest Group, organising regular meetings with
colleagues to provide a ‘best practice’ forum and a networking group of 200 professional members with global outreach.
Keith is also the founder of Wyeval Consulting, an independent ITS consultancy set up to add value to commercial solutions, with a strong interest in the social, economic and environmental impact that the
application of ITS technologies can make in implementing sustainable and equitable policies.
Richard Wu
CTO & Vice President of Technology Division, Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co. Ltd
Richard has over 20 years’ experience in the tolling industry with demonstrated track record successfully design & implement Taiwan ETC system. He has a Master of Computer Engineering,
Syracuse University USA. Strong skilled at planning, developing and maintaining large-scale ETC system with cost-effective method & methodology. Across the board capability of ETC related technology. Strong understanding of ITS/ETC application development.
Miroslav Bobošík
Director of Strategy and Marketing, Skytoll (Slovakia)
Miroslav Bobošík completed his university studies in Business Management at University of Economics in Bratislava. He has the telecommunication background, he worked for Slovak Telekom since 2001, as the part and later the head of the sales team. Since 2007 he worked for Slovanet, the biggest alternative
telecommunication operator in Slovakia, as the Marketing and Product Director. At the end of 2009 he became the member of the team preparing the launch of electronic toll collection system in SkyT. where he currently works as the Head of Strategy and Marketing.
Tom Antonissen
Senior Advisor Europe & Central Asia, International Road Federation (IRF)
Tom Antonissen is in his current role since November 2014, though has close to a decade experience with road transport policy and the IRF in particular. His responsibilities include spearheading IRF’s
program of regional congresses and training workshops in Europe & Central Asia and facilitating the activities of the IRF ITS Committee. Previously he has been representing several multimodal transporand logistics associations towards the EU institutions, media and stakeholders. A Belgian national, he also acted for several years as Secretary General of three Belgian and two European trade federations
active in the construction machinery sector.
Daniel Firth
Chief Strategy Officer, City of Stockholm Department of Transportation
Daniel Firth is project manager for the city’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Strategy, which has the overall aim of enabling continued growth of the city of Stockholm without increasing road traffic. His role is to ensure that all plans and projects within the city are in line with the aims of the strategy, and contribute to the promotion of sustainable transport and an attractive, inclusive street environment. Daniel is also responsible for the co-ordination and implementation of the city’s policies on congestion pricing and strategic parking management Before his arrival at Stockholm City Council, Daniel spent five years at Transport for London, working on the implementation and operation of the central London congestion
charging scheme. Previous assignments include research roles in London and Stockholm, exploring, amongst others, road user charging (including advising the UK Government), public transport interchanges, the role of road investment in regional development and urban freight management.
Daniel is a Town Planner educated at the University of Newcastle upon-Tyne, England and at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden
Steve Kearns
Technology Manager, Technology Delivery Group, Transport for London
Worked for 30 years as a Transport Planner in London, the last 15 years of which have been for Transport for London (TfL). Major projects include setting up Community Transport projects across
London; preparing a business case for an international railway station at Stratford; working for 8 years in the TfL team implementing London’s Congestion Charging scheme; developing TfL’s ITS portfolio and helping to initiate the Traffic Demand Management scheme used during the London Olympics. He has a Master of Science degree in Transport Planning from University of Westminster, is a member of
Chartered Institute of Transport and was a member of the European Union’s ITS Urban Expert Group from 2010-12 created by DG MOVE.
The 13th
annual Road User Charging Conference takes place March 2-3, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. For more information and to keep up to date with all the latest conference news go to
www.roaduserchargingconference.co.uk.
