One of Spain’s leading multidisciplinary consulting and technology companies has been awarded a contract to expand the bus lane enforcement program in Chile’s capital city, Santiago.
Indra, a leading global provider of intelligent traffic and urban transport management systems, has been awarded a further contract by Transantiago to implement its vehicle identification system, in order to help keep the city’s bus lanes clear of unauthorized traffic, on a greatly-expanded number of routes. The system that Indra previously installed during the first phase of the program has already increased bus lane traffic flow by 30%.
Transantiago is the Chilean capital’s fully integrated public transportation system that was introduced in 2007, replacing thousands of independent bus operators. The system combines local feeder bus lines with main bus lines and a metro network, including an integrated fare system and contactless payment cards. With approximately 400 bus lines and 12,000 bus stops, free movement of its buses is critical to the city’s mobility.
Transantiago has awarded Indra a new contract worth €2.8m (US$3.2m) for expanding its system that is used for supervising and identifying vehicles using bus lanes, which will enable the city’s public transport system to improve its services for the 3.3m riders that use it every day. The system is comprised of a software platform that features video recording, management and analysis tools; registration plate detection and list cross-check applications; and traffic violation processing systems.
Indra’s technology will read vehicle registration plates at 106 new checkpoints across the city that are in addition to the 41 installed during the previous phase of the program, and will check them against a database of vehicles that are authorized to use bus lanes. In the case of an unauthorized vehicle, the system monitors it to verify whether it is driving in the lane exclusively for the purpose of turning or using it to avoid traffic, in which case an infraction is issued when the vehicle passes along two consecutive inspection points.
The new contract includes the deployment of 106 panoramic view cameras that monitor the overall traffic landscape, and 134 ALPR cameras that can detect and read registration plates. The cameras report the context of each individual traffic violation to the Strategic Inspection Center for manual verification. The expansion of this system to a large number of new streets will enable Transantiago to continue reducing travel times on the city’s public transportation network, increase service management efficiency, reduce vehicle emissions, and improve the quality of life for millions of passengers who use public transport in Santiago.
Indra has been present in Chile since 1995, and currently has over 800 employees in the country, where it is one of the leading IT services companies. Indra has a strong presence in Latin America, where it has completed urban public transportation management projects in Medellin (Colombia), Curitiba (Brazil) and Mexico.
