As visitors to the Q-Free booth at the ITS World Congress Detroit will see, the company has transformed its portfolio, shifting from a predominant focus on tolling to cover all aspects of road operations – financing, condition monitoring, real-time management and emerging cooperative ITS applications.
September 7, 2014
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Transforming the portfolio: Jenny Simonsen of Q-Free
As visitors to the 108 Q-Free booth at the ITS World Congress Detroit will see, the company has transformed its portfolio, shifting from a predominant focus on tolling to cover all aspects of road operations – financing, condition monitoring, real-time management and emerging cooperative ITS applications.
With the event being staged in Detroit, it provides Q-Free with an opportunity to highlight its appreciable presence in the North American market. Recently it acquired 5660 Open Roads Consulting, a specialist in advanced transportation management and traveller information systems that operates mission-critical traffic systems and undertakes video-based surveillance of critical assets in 30 states across the US.
Previously, Q-Free bought 7045 TCS International, a US-based, international supplier of advanced parking guidance systems. Meanwhile, Dacolian USA, another Q-Free group company, is North America’s major supplier of automatic number plate recognition and vehicle signature recognition image processing software.
Nevertheless, says Thomas Falck, CEO, these developments have to be considered in an international context: “The North American region will play an increasing part in our future but it is the international nature of our business which remains one of our core strengths. We will be keen to demonstrate at the 6456 ITS World Congress that with offices around the world, we have a huge range of talent and experience on which to draw. This means we can create solutions which benefit from the best of global practice but which, nevertheless, are closely tailored to local needs.”
Panasonic is showcasing the evolution of vehicle On-Board Units (OBU) which combine electronic toll collection with provision of real-time travel information to drivers. The first generation of DSRC-based OBUs launched to market in Japan back in 2001, where around 40 million are now in use. The technology is especially relevant in Panasonic’s home country, as all motorways are private and congestion is a common problem. Value-added services such as local parking information can also be accessed.
A growing, maturing set of enforcement applications and a new-generation system which is half the size of its predecessor are the focus on Kria’s stand. The Italian company, which specialises in 3D vision-based solutions, is finding that its open architecture solution is allowing customers’ applications to evolve in place, says company president Stefano Arrighetti.
Vendeka underlined the robust health of the Turkish ITS industry when it signed a multi-million dollar deal with the San Miguel Corporation of the Philippines, at Intertraffic last night. The contract is to implement Vendeka’s Hybrid electronic toll collection (ETC) solution in three major highways in the Philippines. The scope of the project covers three tollways, 60 plazas, 300 lanes and 200,000 RFID tags.
Telegra is coming to Intertraffic Amsterdam 2014 to feature what it has termed “Signs of Intelligence!” – the company’s NextGen series of signs which are claimed to be a quantum leap in LED sign technology. They are a CE certified, lightweight, modularised and hermetically sealed sign that can be assembled in any size. Innovative technology ensures almost no maintenance required, so the company states that Operation & Maintenance (O&M) cost savings may reach 60%. State-of-the-art optical technology has redu
