Integrating traffic management and tolling technologies

Jamie Surkont, head of road safety enforcement with Kapsch, outlines the company’s efforts to set up and align new traffic management business units with its more widely recognised tolling expertise

The blurring of ITS applications’ edges brought about by systems’ increasing functionalities will ensure that many of the technologies which we have come to rely on for road and traffic management will find it increasingly difficult to exist or operate within tight market verticals. At the same time, systems manufacturers and suppliers will have to take steps to protect existing products’ market share against the encroachment of newer technologies, or else diversify to address evolving needs. Convergence now being a fact of life, companies which have been major players even in the larger market verticals are going to be forced to adapt – and that is precisely what we are now seeing.

81 Kapsch’s response to this trend has been to establish an ITS Business Unit distinct from but complementary to the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) Business Unit which has done so much to establish the company’s name over previous decades. A year in the making, the ITS Business Unit is essentially brand-new and will itself be composed of a series of smaller segments. The first of these, the Road Safety Enforcement segment, is being launched at the 136 Traffex event in the UK this year and there will be a rolling programme of launches over the next twelve months; the ITS sector can expect to see traffic management and electronic vehicle registration solutions among those which eventually emerge.

Evolving roles

Globally, the road safety market is a mature one and although Kapsch may still be regarded by many as a ‘tolling company’, the truth is that it has been involved in the traffic management sector for quite some time. In part, this is as a natural outgrowth of tolling, in that tolled roads and facilities tend to be early adopters of ITS technology because of a desire to add value; tolling concessions have a need to persuade road users that their facilities are somehow preferable to non-tolled options and the addition of technology and the improvements in traffic management and information services which result are a means of doing this. It follows therefore that the major tolling system suppliers and operators – increasingly, the two are often one and the same – tend to have significant knowledge of ITS systems and applications which are not central to the tolling solution itself.

At the same time, it often makes little sense to develop from scratch solutions which already exist and can be acquired from elsewhere. A trend in recent years within the tolling sector has been for the larger players to make carefully targeted acquisitions and look to become a supplier of systems and services from the very earliest stages of a tolling scheme’s inception all the way through to deployment and even operations should that be required. Now, that trend is being extended with tolling companies looking beyond their non-core business and moving into traffic management and road safety in the wider senses. In Kapsch’s case, acquisitions in South Africa and Italy, for instance, have seen the addition to the portfolio of companies with over 15 years’ expertise apiece in the road safety and urban access control sectors.

Combining applications

“Kapsch Force” is the product which will underpin the Road Safety Enforcement segment’s offering. This comprehensive enforcement suite might also be regarded as an enforcement ‘engine’ which will support the vast majority of, if not all, enforcement applications – red light, spot and section speed control as well as Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) and commercial vehicle identification/validation. In addition, Kapsch Force offers traffic surveillance functionality helping the police and related authorities working with this solution to increase public security. 

Kapsch has been careful to identify the particular characteristics of the enforcement sector and in doing so has come up with a solution which is markedly different in terms of operational concept.
Many enforcement system manufacturers and suppliers are in effect box-shifters – specialists in Front-End Devices (FEDs)/edge-of-network (typically camera) technologies for which they then look to develop and offer a complementing back office solution (a process which has accelerated in recent years as result of digitisation). Kapsch, by contrast, and driven in part by its background in the ETC field, has come at the enforcement ‘problem’ with a back-end solution which recognises that most data exchanges also typically include a payment element – whether this be for data/information services, or in the form of reconciliation of a violation.

As a result, Kapsch Force is a back-to-front rather than a front-to-back platform and is technology-agnostic in the sense
that it can link to any FED. A front-end integration layer sits between it and any FEDs and Kapsch Force will accept metadata in any format but will store it in a single, usable form which is pre-agreed with the customer or user. In the case of an infringement the primary evidence is also retained should this for any reason be needed again later.

This approach has some important benefits. It means that Kapsch Force addresses the homologation issue by using already homologated FEDs. As a result the deployment process is simpler, the all-important evidence chain is preserved and workflow within the enforcement process is seamless. It also means that Kapsch Force is adaptable. Kapsch can supply FEDs where this is desired or necessary – the company offers, for instance, its own branded WIM solution as well as camera technology from its traffic management portfolio. However the company recognises that local conditions, be they legacy/preferred technologies, geography and weather or budgetary factors can all have a huge bearing on final FED choices.

Fewer, cleverer systems

Turning back to convergence and looking farther into the future, the goal of any traffic jurisdiction should be to have as few discrete solutions in operation as possible and Kapsch Force operates seamlessly with traffic management solutions supplied by its parent company. The platform’s philosophy also recognises that enforcement and traffic management are not mutually exclusive. In the case of WIM, for example, data is not just needed to enforce against overloads but can also be held and mined at a later date for maintenance purposes or to gain a better impression of a road’s usage profile. An intrinsic FED data store provides for this very need.

The data store and cross-jurisdictional working touches on some major, non-technical issues however. Some of the biggest barriers to true convergence are institutional. Comprehensive security, surveillance, enforcement, safety and management solutions are perfectly possible in the technological sense but bringing several organisations or jurisdictions into one technology platform can come up against some very entrenched attitudes.

Kapsch segments at a very high level, allowing it to recognise the often very real differences between mature and emerging markets. Most technologies require a sustainable business model and in the past in the traffic management sector a prime driver has been safety. More capable technological solutions open the door to greater numbers of applications involving enriched data sets although many of these are qualitative, ‘soft’ improvements which can be difficult to measure – and justify – in absolute terms.

Many technology providers choose to concentrate on hardware and software and avoid such discussions but Kapsch – in line with that ‘user pays’ principle – looks to offer operational and organisational expertise through its business units. This is another carry-over from the tolling sector, where managed services are becoming increasingly popular, but is highly relevant in the current business climate where budgets are often very tight.

The ‘intrusion’ into traffic management of the private sector is often criticised but in reality it is rather less of a radical move than some observers would have us believe; and one which can be managed well through properly formulated contracts which enshrine realistic goals and KPIs. 

Kapsch Force is currently at the pre-integration phase for sensor technologies, with partner agreements currently being drawn up for FEDs. Essentially, therefore, it is available to market immediately.