New Technologies for Smart Cities and Smart Roads

From words to deeds

Two particularly important features of the Lisbon road system are the two distinctive bridges that span the River Tagus, the 25 de Abril Bridge and the Vasco da Gama Bridge, which in fact constitute the only road links between the Portuguese capital and the southern bank of the river, and are traversed daily by nearly 200,000 vehicles (nearly 2/3 of which cross using the 25 de Abril Bridge).

Toll Plaza Management

Since the late 1990s, we have been developing, maintaining and constantly updating the comprehensive “Toll Plaza Management” (TPM) system, created using cutting-edge technologies that guarantee reliability, security, data redundancy and Business Continuity in the event of a hardware or software crash in the computer system.

• Accounting consolidation of traffic data and of the business conducted by the Points of Sale and by Customer Service, reconciliation of the amounts deposited by toll collectors, updating of the specific subsystems dedicated to different types of traffic, updating of the “Remote Clients Account” for subscription-based passes that require it.
• Management and consultation of lists of both subscribers and “Occasional Customers”.
• Presentation of accounts, reporting, and general and analytical statistics with the possibility of comparisons over time, diversified so as to be able to analyse each different aspect of the system, including the distribution of traffic and of revenues, business conducted by the Points of Sale and by Customer Service, amounts deposited by toll collectors, trends in the distribution of the various subscription-pass products, technical and administrative irregularities, etc.
• Invoicing System for habitual and returning post-payment traffic, certified by the Portuguese Tax Authority, including the generation of updating flows for the internal ERP system.
• Checking and validation of photos and number plates of vehicles with toll violations, overseeing and issuing payment notifications, processing and checking on enquiries, managing a system for the documentation of customer notes and documents.

Fréjus Tunnel

Meanwhile, for the Fréjus Tunnel, we continue to monitor the operation and manage the maintenance of the administrative platform we created for the Tunnel and the A32 (SMITE system). As part of a Temporary Consortium of Contractors (ATI) involving leading Italian and European industrial firms, we directly developed the plaza and product Server (SGP) and everything relating to it, and performed the installation of all of the toll collection station equipment on site.

In 2011, SISEX (Switzerland) entrusted us with the task of designing and building from scratch the toll collection system for the Great St Bernard Tunnel, including hardware and software. The innovative system we created combines traditional drive-through toll collection with advanced systems for the booking and management of online payments for all types of vehicles, occasional travellers and pass holders. The system came online on 24 April 2012 and has been operating smoothly ever since, with our personnel managing maintenance requirements 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.