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.”
Camera supplier Lumenera is exhibiting its camera systems at ITS America first time under its own name. Previously the company’s cameras have been exhibited alongside the traffic surveillance and enforcement products into which they are incorporated.
Metric Group predicts that 2014 will go down in its long history as ‘the year of innovation.’ The company is bringing to the market several innovations, not only to current concepts, but new ones as well. Visitors to Intertraffic Amsterdam 2014 will have an opportunity of seeing these Metric innovations, across the parking industry from local government to retail and leisure, at first hand.
Daktronics is driving the adoption of full colour dynamic message signs (DMS) in the US. The company recommends colour signage, because drivers recognise colour graphics more quickly than text-only monochrome signs. The ultimate result is safer and more efficient roadways.
Aldis has reduced the size of its GridSmart CPU in order to make it a better fit for traffic cabinets worldwide. The company has also released version 3.2 of the software which supports its video detection solution. Advanced tracking algorithms are combined with an enhanced, more user-friendly graphical user interface which features fully actuated intersection detection, traffic data collection, and a mini-TMC capability which uses digital pan/tilt/zoom capability for intersection surveillance.
