Large local authorities and resourceful companies are involving themselves in some impressive transport schemes.

RCS, for example – part of the Balfour Beatty group – has installed a 1,000-vehicle GPS tracking system from APD Communications that records data such as location, journey start time and speed.

‘The system provides greater accountability, reduces administration and paperwork, and provides accurate and intelligent data,’ says Nigel Gibbons, operational systems manager at RCS.

‘It is also a security tracking system, and has been used to recover several stolen vehicles.’

Gibbons advises technology leaders to consider running costs and make sure users are committed from the outset.

But John Sutton, director for transport information systems at transport consultant MVA, sees potential challenges arising from the amount of data being provided by sensor networks such as the RCS project.

‘How do you sensibly and intelligently respond in real time? We have not really got to grips with this yet, and nobody is providing a co-ordinated overview,’ he says. ‘Even with a mechanism for data exchange you get information overload.

‘We could do with a meta-data for transport. It is one of the challenges. How do you filter information in a way that people can use it sensibly?’

For the Kent Thameside Fastrack project, the public transport system being implemented for the Kent Thameside area, information is available through a digital transport network.

The infrastructure has been produced by a partnership between urban digital network specialist Cityspace and real-time passenger information provider ACIS, and provides wireless broadband to smart panels at bus shelters for real-time information and interactive travel planning for passengers.

The project aims to integrate existing communities with a development of 30,000 new homes during the next 30 years. The first service began in March.

Fastrack project manager David George says the initiative has been like a jigsaw puzzle, and implementation will continue for many years to come.

Success will be measured in terms of the regeneration of the area. ‘We are building the project to shape future travel patterns,’ he says.

‘We need to persuade people to use public transport if we are to achieve our objective and create a sustainable community where people can live, work and pursue leisure without having to rely on a car.’

But transport technology systems are not only about inclusion. Andrew Kellet, senior consultant at analyst Butler Group, says there are serious considerations regarding security.

He believes that the cost of biometric and other high-tech security platforms is prohibitive for most forms of transport, and that only air transport requires such protection.

‘Biometrics will be restricted to high-security issues,’ he says.

‘The customer will be protected through access control, particularly by airport authorities.’

One transport high-risk area is international freight, for which companies are beginning to use mixed security technology.

Accenture Technology Labs has just completed a pilot study securing a vehicle’s journey from the manufacturing plant to the point of delivery.

Drivers are subjected to iris and fingerprint scans, while cargoes are traced using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and GPS.

Joel Osman, senior executive at Accenture, says drivers are verified the minute they enter the pick-up area. ‘The back doors of the truck are secured with contact sensors that automatically detect when the door is being opened and closed,’ he says.

MVA’s Sutton says sensor networks will also be used on the roads for a variety of purposes, including the reading of number plates and to determine average speeds.

Distribution of sensors varies geographically and ranges from the application of the M25’s automatic speed controls to sparse use of technology on some sections of motorway.

‘Technologies are not being applied in a systematic way,’ he says. ‘Some highways are very poorly instrumented. We have a long way to go in terms of putting sensors out there to tell if an incident has occurred.’

In other sectors, RFID technology is used for labelling vehicles, checking when carriages arrive at stations and to record when cargo is delivered.

If costs can be reduced, RFID technology will be used in ticketing and real-time demand planning for passengers.

As with smart ticketing, RFID will move into the mainstream when unit prices fall sufficiently.

Limited-use smartcard ticketing becomes viable when the unit cost of the tickets falls below ¤0.25, according to Trevor Crotch-Harvey, director of Innovision Research & Technology.

Crotch-Harvey says other technology challenges for the transport sector include standardisation and creating workable systems.

Electronic and mobile payments

David Hytch, a consultant in LogicaCMG’s transport division, says rail companies and airlines are already using electronic payments to great benefit, mainly to reduce the cost of sale.

Hytch says selling tickets through traditional offline means can cost 10 per cent of a ticket’s face value, while e-ticketing can reduce this figure to five per cent.

Perhaps the best known electronic payment ticketing system is the Oyster card, run by Transport for London (TfL). There are five million cards in circulation.

But infrastructure costs often deter smaller organisations from installing similar systems, says John Sutton, director for transport information systems at transport consultant MVA.

‘They have traditionally not budgeted for IT spend and they have to be shown the benefit from studying other authorities, such as London,’ he says.

Compared with electronic services, progress in enabling payment over mobile phone networks remains some way behind.

Hytch says mobile payment technologies are a highly contentious issue.

‘The major question remains over who will pay for the provision of this service,’ he says.

‘As yet, there is no formal set-up with merchants, issuers and so on. Until this can be resolved, there can be no real widespread service.’

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