Norwegian ITS and tolling systems supplier, Q-Free has signed a NKr25m (US$3.2m) contract with the USA tolling system integrator TransCore for Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) processing support in Florida.
Under the 6.5-year agreement, Q-Free will provide TransCore with operations and maintenance support services for the recently deployed Intrada Insight image review system that is being used on the Central Florida Expressway (CFX) project. In October 2015, the CFX Authority awarded TransCore a US$85m contract to design, install and maintain a new electronic toll collection (ETC) system for over 300 of its toll lanes, replacing a legacy system that the company had installed in the early 1990s. The upgrade is slated to be completed in 2018, and is expected to improve the accuracy and reliability of the system used to collect and manage transactions that occur at 86 toll plazas and along 109 miles (175km) of expressways throughout the metropolitan Orlando area.
TransCore is upgrading the CFX system with its Infinity Digital Lane System, which includes the company’s Vehicle Capture and Recognition System (VCARS) units that have hardware components and cameras to provide overlapping fields of view, resulting in improved overall system accuracy. The Plate Processing System (PPS) then uses all available VCARS images from different viewing angles to provide a more accurate final optical character recognition (OCR) result for each captured license plate.
This data is then used by Q-Free’s Intrada Insight high-performance turnkey end-to-end image processing system for video-based toll transactions. Insight integrates Q-Free’s Intrada Synergy Server (ISS) automation engine, a data processing and warehouse component, and a Manual Image Review (MIR) subsystem. The ISS uses the Intrada ALPR library, together with ‘fingerprinting’ techniques to produce results that typically delivers ?70% automation rates, and operates at or above 99.95% read accuracy.
“This contract represents another key win for us in the North American tolling market,” noted, Håkon Volldal, Q-Free’s president and CEO. “It demonstrates the competitiveness of our image-based solutions, and builds our recurring revenue base.”
Q-Free has also signed a 3-year frame agreement, worth NKr11m (US$1.4m), with Northern Capital Highway, a toll operator in St Petersburg, Russia.
Volldal commented, “The tag market in Russia has been picking up over the last years, and we have received orders from several customers. The frame agreement with Northern Capital Highway is the largest single agreement for us in Russia to date and demonstrates our competitiveness in this growing market.”
