>Al,
>
>I don't feel like spending $3 to read the article, care to give a synopsis of it?

Ahh, sorry, I'm a subscriber, I thought it was a freely available article... I guess not.

The German government entered into a PPP to develop a system to automatically charge road tolls to truckers, using satellite-positioning and mobile telephony technologies. The partnership coalition includes DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Telekom and CofiRoute of France.

Problems that are mostly software-related have greatly delayed implementation of this system. They include such things as showing trucks as being on roadways when they are merely near them, and draining truck batteries when the truck is not running.

Since Dec. 1 last year the partnership has been paying penalties of EU250,000 per day. However, this is only a fraction of the estimated revenue loss to the German government - EU6M per day. The system is not expected to be operational before "fall 2004". Revenue losses to the German government are expected to top EU2B.

The partnership has already offered the German government a EU500M settlement - no word on whether they will accept or scrap the entire project and start again.

The loss of revenue to the German government has meant that all new road and related projects since last August, along with 70,000 jobs have been postponed or cancelled.