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.”
In the camera world, HD imaging is increasingly becoming an established technology and this trend is now also continued in traffic monitoring and detection, as more and more traffic agencies are choosing HD cameras to control and secure their urban and highway traffic. In answer to this trend, Flir Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is unveiling here at Intertraffic an extension to its portfolio with a HD version of its Automatic Incident Detection (AID) cameras.
The Advanced Mobile Asset Collection (AMAC) system measures traffic sign and pavement marking retroreflectivity while creating a comprehensive asset inventory and condition assessment. AMAC was developed through a team of engineers, physicists, psychologists and statisticians by DBi/Cidaut Technologies, a partnership between the US’s DBi Serives and Spain’s CIDAUT Foundation.
French rising barrier specialist La Barrière Automatique is marking its 30th anniversary with its first appearance at Intertraffic. Featured on its stand is its recently-launched LBAT 10 full-height turnstile for pedestrian control access.
Germany company Dresden Elektronik is showcasing its deZign electronic timetabling technology for the first time here at Intertraffic. Using flexible plastic displays from Plastic Logic, the monochrome deZign display allows traditional paper timetables to be replaced at the push of a button. The solution is robust, daylight-readable and low power – fixed content requires no power, while text changes require only minimal energy.
