Skip to main content

3M shows faith in tolling

3M’s decision to acquire the business of Federal Signal Technologies Group (FSTech) from Federal Signal Corporation for a purchase price of US$110 million in cash provides an insight into the company’s view of the tolling industry’s future health. 3M says the fast-growing US$3 billion electronic tolling industry is projected to grow at a rate greater than 12 per cent per year as government agencies increasingly rely on tolling to fund roadway infrastructure, construction and maintenance. The company says FS
August 13, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
4080 3M’s decision to acquire the business of 811 Federal Signal Technologies Group (FSTech) from 38 Federal Signal Corporation for a purchase price of US$110 million in cash provides an insight into the company’s view of the tolling industry’s future health.

3M says the fast-growing US$3 billion electronic tolling industry is projected to grow at a rate greater than 12 per cent per year as government agencies increasingly rely on tolling to fund roadway infrastructure, construction and maintenance.

The company says FSTech’s solutions for electronic tolling, vehicle identification and classification, toll management software, licence plate recognition, and parking lot fare collection systems, combined with 3M’s traffic management solutions, will advance the tolling and parking industry, enabling seamless fare collection wherever motorists drive.

“Electronic tolling and parking are key adjacencies to 3M’s offering for motor vehicle systems and services,” said John Houle, vice president and general manager, 3M Traffic Safety Systems Division. “FSTech will complement 3M’s offerings for the Department of Transportation, the Department of Motor Vehicles, toll authorities, and law enforcement agencies, and expand on our core traffic products for motor vehicles and roadways, and licence plate validation materials.”

FSTech’s technologies come from its five business units: 36 Idris - vehicle detection and classification solution; PIPS - fixed and mobile automatic license plate reading hardware and software; 6359 Federal APD - parking management and fare collection solutions; 495 Sirit - active and passive RFID transponders and readers; and 2073 VESystems - toll account management and violation processing software and services.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Introducing the CitySync automated license plate recognition solution
    September 20, 2012
    Image Sensing Systems, US-based supplier of software-based detection solutions for ITS, law enforcement, security and parking, introduces its CitySync Automated License Plate Recognition (LPR) solution, the latest in LPR technology and software. The CitySync ALPR is a complete system and includes the company’s LPR cameras, highly accurate recognition software and their Jet-BOF back-office system, a fully functional, web-based back-office that provides storage, matching and reporting of LPR data. The system
  • Introducing the CitySync automated license plate recognition solution
    September 20, 2012
    Image Sensing Systems, US-based supplier of software-based detection solutions for ITS, law enforcement, security and parking, introduces its CitySync Automated License Plate Recognition (LPR) solution, the latest in LPR technology and software. The CitySync ALPR is a complete system and includes the company’s LPR cameras, highly accurate recognition software and their Jet-BOF back-office system, a fully functional, web-based back-office that provides storage, matching and reporting of LPR data. The system
  • Will interoperability prevent progress?
    January 10, 2014
    David Crawford examines the political and industrial background to the tolling technology debate. Saving the US State of California ‘millions of dollars’ in tolling infrastructure costs by encouraging new technologies is the professed aim of a legislative Bill, SB 242, which is currently moving through the State’s Senate (upper house) process. According to its sponsor, Republican State Senator Mark Wyland, permitting alternatives to the current FasTrak-branded radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based sys
  • Machine vision’s image of road management’s future
    June 11, 2015
    Q-Free’s Marco Sinnema looks at how the commoditisation of high-quality vision-based solutions is widening their application. Machine vision technology’s entry into the ITS/traffic management sector has followed a classic top-down path. This is unsurprising given the extremely demanding performance criteria which are the standard in its market of origin, manufacturing processing. Very high image qualities combined with frame rates often in the hundreds per second range resulted in vision systems with capabi