As one of the world’s largest toll road operators, Transurban works to get people where they want to go, as quickly and safely as possible – from designing and building new roads to researching new vehicle and road safety technology.

Transurban is an Australian-owned company that builds and operates toll roads in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, as well as in Greater Washington, United States and Montreal, Canada. Transurban designs roads for the long term, ensuring they’ll deliver real and lasting benefits to cities and their communities.

In addition to roads, Transurban operates Linkt, Australia’s largest toll road retail operator, supporting close to 4 million customer accounts and 400 million trips annually. Linkt offers toll road payment arrangements, customer support, account management services and digital offerings.

In 2017, Transurban disrupted the tolling industry by launching LinktGO – the world’s first national virtualised tolling platform. LinktGO shifts the paradigm in toll road payments: it replaces the physical tag with an app and physical gantries with virtual geo-fences.

Using a smartphone’s GPS, LinktGO allows drivers to see toll travel in real time and pay trip-by-trip using just their phones, with no need for a tag and no ongoing commitment. It not only redefines the traditional tolling supply chain, but also a customer’s value chain – it provides the first product in Australia to allow trip-by-trip payments in place of prepaid passes and account balances.

Recent customer research indicated that around 50 per cent of Transurban’s customers are occasional toll road users, meaning they typically use toll roads less than four times a year. The research also showed that these customers want flexibility, control and easier ways to manage their toll-road travel.

Many just want to pay for a one-off toll. Historically, these infrequent users have had to choose between the commitment of an account or a temporary pass, with few options in between. To provide a viable product for these customers, Transurban developed LinktGO – an innovative GPSbased approach to tolling with customer experience at its heart.

LinktGO was created as a mobile-first experience, using a smartphone rather than a physical transponder and gantries to create the tolling experience.

Leveraging a smartphone’s GPS coupled with geofencing technology, Transurban virtualised the physical tolling infrastructure to develop the world’s first tolling solution to record travel in real time.

LinktGO has created a new paradigm in toll payments. With trip-by-trip payments and full transparency of trip details and costs, it provides a “no account feeling” to those who don’t want to commit to an account but want an easy way to pay.

LinktGO puts control in the hands of the customer, giving them a seamless and empowering way to access the entire toll network in Australia.