El éxito de las empresas españolas de gestión de tráfico

 

Autor: José Papí, Director Gerente, Plataforma Tecnológica Española de la Carretera (PTC)

Artículo publicado en el número de enero de 2012 de la revista "Traffic Engineering Control"

 

THE SUCCESS OF THE SPANISH TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY

 

Road traffic have always played a key role in the progress and economic growth of any nation, both through the direct impact of a higher mobility to citizens and goods and through the indirect benefits derived from building the infrastructures required. In the case of Spain, the development of a modern transport network coupled time-wise with a substantial increase of the socioeconomic conditions enjoyed by the citizenship, and this fact made the role played by road traffic self-evident to the Spanish society. Since then, the Spanish construction industry has grown exponentially and become a global leader, as it is transferring its knowledge and expertise in planning, building, equipping and operating road networks all across the world.

 

Most TEC readers will be familiar with the fact that, according to the 2011 ranking published by the specialised magazine Public Works Financing, 5 Spanish companies make it to the Top 10 in the ranking of the world’s top infrastructure concession groups (ACS, Globalvia, Abertis, Ferrovial, OHL, Sacyr, Acciona), with 4 additional Spanish companies (Sacyr, Acciona, Isolux-Corsán, Itínere) joining the Top 40.

 

However, it must be noted that the Spanish traffic management industry - as its peers in the infrastructure sector - has also made a successful way to the international markets, combining both commercial dynamism and a passion for research, development and innovation.

 

Companies like Indra, Telvent, SICE or Grupo Etra are a flagship for the industry both in Spain and globally, being present in more than a 100 countries altogether. According to Enrique Belda, Deputy Director for Traffic at the Spanish National Directorate General for Traffic (DGT), “the experience gathered by Spanish traffic companies in operating a modern road infrastructure like ours has been very relevant when the time has come to innovate and move abroad”.

 

In an effort that involved more than 50 organisations and 220 individual experts, the Spanish Road Technology Platform – a stakeholder forum promoted by the Spanish Ministry for Science & Innovation - recently mapped out a plethora of ITS R&D projects developed by the Spanish traffic management industry, to then build a Strategic Research Agenda for the period 2011-2025 which set up a detailed implementation plan for 32 priority R&D actions in the ITS field. José F. Papí, Managing Director at the Spanish Road Technology Platform, claims that “through this review, the industry realised that most of the existing solutions gathered valuable data for the use of road public and private operators, but more effort was needed to secure the deployment of even more effective services at the service of the final users”.

 

In order to secure a dynamic calculation of the ITS services’ level in place, and following the mandate of the European Directive 2010/40/EU on the framework for the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems, the Spanish industry believes that it is paramount to ameliorate the synergies between the data collected through different technologies. The aforementioned Directive establishes a framework in support of the coordinated and coherent deployment and use of ITS within the European Union, in particular across the borders between the Member States, and provides for the development of specifications for actions within the following priority areas (as well as for the development, where appropriate, of necessary standards):

 

I.    Optimal use of road, traffic and travel data,
II.    Continuity of traffic and freight management ITS services,
III.    ITS road safety and security applications,
IV.    Linking the vehicle with the transport infrastructure.

 

Imanol Esteban, DGT Commercial Director at Indra, believes that “the Directive’s mandate is clear: users need high-quality and real-time information, a requirement that is fully aligned with our company`s quest for more safe, secure, efficient and sustainable traffic solutions”.

 

With more than 30,000 professionals and clients in over 100 countries, Indra is today the 2nd European company by market capitalization in the Information Technology sector, and was responsible for the technology deployment for the scrutiny of the Spanish general elections held last November 20th. The company integrates technologies that are available on the market into complete systems, marketing them throughout Spain and in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Today Indra manages ITS for nearly 2,500 miles of Spanish highways and controls toll lanes and plazas in 15 countries. For instance, the company has been active in China since 1997 and is currently implementing the urban traffic management systems in the Chinese cities of Changde, Guilin, Korla (Bazhou) and Liaochen.

 

Indra is one of a number of systems integrators (which include major international companies such as Telvent and SICE) which develop their own products in house while also integrating available technology to present a cities or regions with complete traffic management.

 

The Spanish Strategic Research Agenda 2011-2025 also highlights the urgent need to adapt road traffic to the new mobility models (i.e. electric and rechargeable hybrid vehicles), and at the same time calls for optimising the use of existing infrastructures and ameliorating the co-modality between transport modes.

 

Francisco Caceres Salazar, Global Technology Director at Telvent Transportation, is of the opinion that “traffic operators must make the right decisions today and put in place a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly urban and interurban mobility”. Telvent spends a significant portion of its revenue on R&D and develops its own proprietary technologies, for instance the SmartMobility™ Road Suite, an integration of Intelligent Transport Services that combines smart real-time information with advanced mobility management solutions through a centralised platform. Telvent supplies intelligent systems that control traffic at more than 9,000 intersections a day, and toll networks that handle 1.5 million vehicles annually; its clients include the New York State Department of Transportation and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

 

Just a few weeks ago the firm successfully launched a “511” Traveller Information Service for Maryland State Highway Administration in the U.S. Through this service, travellers now have access to real-time traffic and travel-related news to better plan trips and avoid traffic congestion. It also provides travellers with information on traffic jams, incidents, road construction and weather-related delays, together with links to the state’s transit systems, airports and tourist attractions.

 

Field Operations Tests (FOTs) for ITS cooperative systems are also a trend that has been taken up remarkably by the Spanish traffic management industry. In 2011 a multinational consortiums led by Iridium (a Spanish concession operator 100% owned by ACS) put in motion FOTsis (European Field Operational Test on Safe, Intelligent and Sustainable Road Operation), an EU-funded large-scale field testing of the road infrastructure management systems needed for the operation of 7 close-to-market cooperative I2V, V2I & I2I technologies (the FOTsis Services), in order to assess in detail both their effectiveness and their potential for a full-scale deployment in European roads. FOTsis will test the road infrastructure’s capability to incorporate the 7 services in 9 test-sites across four European countries (Spain, Portugal, Germany and Greece). Amongst its 23 partners, 9 Spanish organisations are present: Iridium, OHL, Indra, SICE, GMV Sistemas, the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the research centre CI3).

 

According to José Manuel Portilla, ITS product manager at SICE, one of the key partners in the FOTsis Consortium, “the project represents a major step forward to better connect vehicles, infrastructures and traffic management centres, the main focus being placed on the responsibilities of the road operator”.

 

SICE was responsible for the tunnel integration of Madrid’s Calle 30 (a world reference in urban tunnels) and holds extensive national and international experience in developing centralised urban traffic management systems in cities over 50,000 people. Very recently, a new traffic control centre installed by SICE opened up in Lima (Peru), while ACS has used the gantry technology integrated by SICE in free-flow toll roads in Santiago de Chile or Melbourne (Australia). SICE integrates complete highway solutions in Europe, Latin America, and North America, and at times operates highway road tolls as a concessionaire standing in for a public authority.

 

In order to promote a long-term solution to infrastructure financing and taxing, securing the recovery of the actual internal and external costs associated to road traffic is a must. The Spanish Strategic Research Agenda 2011-2025 emphasises the need for dynamic pay-per-use solutions that make the utmost use of the existing technologies. The Spanish traffic management industry believes that only collaborative environments that bring together road side units, in-vehicle/on-board equipment and traffic control centres will be able to provide these charging services in an efficient manner.

 

Grupo Etra has been active in the Urban Mobility Solutions business since 1979. Javier Núñez, the company’s Mobility Director, states that “clients are becoming more and more conscious of the need for viable and solid ITS solutions for traffic and demand management, especially in urban areas”.

 

Grupo Etra has been a key partner in a key EU-funded project such as TELEFOT (Field Operational Tests of Aftermarket and Nomadic Devices in Vehicles) and provides integral solutions for the mobility in the cities, having installed nearly 30 mobility management systems in the most important urban areas in Spain, including Madrid. Grupo Etra integrates intelligent traffic management with user information, parking information and public transport priority, contributing to the efficient movement of people and goods in those cities. In Madrid they have implemented a novel means of communicating with the public: the company has designed a system whereby riders can send a text message with the bus number and stop identifier, and immediately receive back a text with the arrival time of the approaching bus.

 

The experiences described above convey the good health of the Spanish traffic management industry, a vibrant sector that has obviously benefited from the extensive internationalisation of the Spanish construction industry, but that at the same time has been able to successfully open markets for public and private clients all across the globe on its own.

 

Our industry is very likely to hear more from the Spanish Conquistadors…

 

Acceda al documento en PDF: "The success of the Spanish traffic management industry", artículo de la revista "Traffic Engineering Control", Enero 2012