As Inspectra has recently joined the ERTICO Partnership, ERTICO has interviewed its Senior Project Manager, Roman Egorov, to understand their main interests in this international ITS network:
Why has Inspectra decided to join the ERTICO Partnership?
We are a Russian company working in the field of Intelligent Transport Systems. We have expertise in Traffic Management Systems, Toll Roads… but at a certain state of our development it became obvious that we needed a solid international contact, a pool of ideas, ready-to-implement technologies. We thought joining the ERTICO Partnership would provide us with that opportunity.
What are the main ITS-related topics of interest for the company?
For us, the most important and interesting topics are linked to the development of Adaptive Traffic Management Systems.
Is Inspectra involved in any particularly successful project or activity oriented to the development of ITS?
The Traffic Management System in Kazan, where we are located, is the most prominent example. It all started with a working group made of representatives of different independent governmental institutions and commercial companies. Their main task was to see how to advance in terms of Traffic Management Systems.
We all knew that the system used at that time was outdated. Kazan is a huge city and we felt that the congestion problem had to be taken seriously. We visited the USA and several countries in Europe and later we decided, with our main partners Swarco and Mizar, to implement an urban Traffic Management System with smart traffic technology.
Since 2010 we have equipped 130 intersections with the roadside equipments for adaptive traffic control and we use more than 600 video detection units. This way, we managed to improve the traffic flow, which became 20% faster. This was something clearly seen and appreciated by the road users. Now our main goal is to implement it in up to 300 intersections.
What is the difference between the Russian and the European markets in terms of ITS?
My personal opinion is that we experienced a giant leap after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Europe and the USA had the opportunity to work on Intelligent Transport Systems, but we did not have it at that time. Now we are a fast evolving market. We try to adopt the most successful ideas that our European partners have, and try to implement them locally. We have considerable amount of knowledge in many spheres of ITS already, but still lack some of its key components and remain the consumers of European technologies. Thus, we come to learn.
How do you see the future of ITS?
That is a good question. There are many speculations about it. I agree with those referring to the ITS of the future as the super-ITS. When we say super-ITS we mean that at some point, everything referring to traffic and transport will be intelligent.
Now in Kazan we have this Traffic Management System that can be considered very intelligent. Soon we will also have intelligent cars, intelligent commuters, intelligent control systems, enablers of information… This all will bring ITS on a new level. Moreover, I think the key features of this new system will be different. For example, we will be talking more and more about autonomy. I really hope that we will be able to rely more and more on driverless public and private transport, as well as on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology.
If you attend any forum on ITS these days you will see many different ITS technologies, which at first might seem isolated from each other. Maybe in a few years, there will be more and more integrated solutions coming out.
