Swedish-based Kapsch TrafficCom says it has signed an agreement with an Indonesian IT firm in preparation to offering electronic road pricing for inner-city areas and highway toll booths.
Kapsch, which first visited Indonesia about three years ago as part of a Swedish trade delegation, signed the deal with Alita Praya Mitra, an information technology unit of local network provider XL Axiata.
The company has also met with Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo and his deputy Basuki Tjahja, to discuss solutions to the capital city’s traffic congestion.
“We see Indonesia as a very interesting country for us in the future,” Goran Andersson, Kapsch’s senior sales manager for emerging markets, told the Jakarta Globe in Stockholm on Thursday.
The Jakarta administration has been mulling various solutions to deter motorists from flooding into the CBD’s overcrowded streets at peak times. One solution is electronic road pricing, which would automatically charge toll fees on cars using roads in the city during certain hours.
The scheme involves identifying vehicles as they pass equipment mounted on gantries above roads to be monitored. This can be done by reading the signal from a transponder box which vehicle owners are required to install, or by reading vehicle registration plates with cameras, or both.
The Jakarta administration had announced it intended to roll out such a scheme during the first quarter of this year, but Kapsch says it is still waiting for the results of the government’s feasibility study.
Source: Jakarta Globe
