Skip to main content

Kapsch announces distribution of 100 millionth OBU

ITS specialist Kapsch has used this week’s ITS World Congress in Melbourne to announce a major milestone: the distribution of 100 million of its on-board-units (OBUs). It held a celebratory function hosted by company CEO Georg Kapsch on Tuesday at its stand to mark this achievement, which it passed in January this year.
October 12, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Georg Kapsch at Tuesday's reception

ITS specialist 81 Kapsch has used this week’s ITS World Congress in Melbourne to announce a major milestone: the distribution of 100 million of its on-board-units (OBUs).

It held a celebratory function hosted by company CEO Georg Kapsch on Tuesday at its stand to mark this achievement, which it passed in January this year. Said to be the smallest on the market, Kapsch OBUs are suitable for any kind of electronic fee collection, and are fully compliant with international standards. They are manufactured at Kapsch’s three production sites around the world.

And as the industry is evolving towards integrated transport, corridor management and connected vehicles, Kapsch has been developing the technology to support these innovative concepts –ultimately embracing mobility as part of smart city concepts.

According to Benoit Robinet, Kapsch TrafficCom Transportation’s vice president, strategy and marketing, the company is at this week’s ITS World Congress in Melbourne to highlight Kapsch’s systems and technologies to support current

needs – but with an eye on the future and the overall smart mobility concept.

“We are featuring our smart mobility suite of products, which we have developed to accommodate an individual agency's transportation management needs, whether a simple signal system to an ATMS or more complex system.

“This suite can now handle full regional requirements between multiple agencies and mobility stakeholders, including event management, decision support systems, traffic forecasting – driving ultimately towards full automation and coordination to meet the needs of connected corridors.

“By such mobility optimisation, agencies can provide the link between what is happening out in the environment and commuters,” he said.

Robinet said Kapsch can also demonstrate success for its approach and technology.

“Since 2013, we have been operating one of the two integrated corridor management deployment sites in Dallas, Texas, where our smart mobility solutions are being used as the ‘brains’ behind the entire operation across multiple jurisdictions,” he said. The system was originally planned for the 20 miles (32km) of the US75 corridor, with multiple stakeholders.

Since then, based on the success of this operation, use of this system has expanded to many more cities and agencies, and will continue to grow to make mobility on US75 corridor more efficient, safe and sustainable.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • ITS industry needs more effort to get to the future
    January 19, 2012
    Eric Sampson, visiting professor at Newcastle University and City University London and ambassador for ITS-UK, provides a retrospective on the last couple of decades and takes a look at what the ITS industry still needs to do to get to where it needs to be
  • Kapsch promotes recently acquired Streetline
    October 7, 2015
    On its stand here at the ITS World Congress, Kapsch TrafficCom is promoting a new business, Streetline, which it acquired in April, 2015, with a vision to expand to new solutions in smart parking and intelligent mobility. Streetline was started in 2006 to help solve the growing global parking problem and today it offers a complete portfolio of smart parking solutions – from street sensors to smartphone apps to full analytics packages.
  • Mobility pricing offers new tools for managing mobility
    November 23, 2017
    Mobility pricing is the best way of sustaining and enhancing mobility, argues Moving Forward Consulting’s Josef Czako. Mobility pricing (MP) is effectively the culmination of the ‘user pays’ principle and has been referred to in many policy discussions about electronic toll collection, road user charging (RUC), and pricing. MP not only reflects the ‘use more, pay more’ nature of RUC, it also takes account of the external cost of journeys including pollution, noise, the cost of congestion and accidents.
  • Hyperloop: from sci-fi to transport policy
    April 16, 2020
    The future is here. While it has long looked like something from a sci-fi movie, Graham Anderson investigates a technology whose time might have come.