I'm blogging from the floor and listening to Carl Zabel in the next booth tell me about loop detectors. Interesting stuff. EDI is a Phoenix based company . Marcy and Joyce just walked back into the booth after having lunch, Barbara just took a picture of me live blogging.
So what's new? So far not a lot that I can see – There are a number of European companies here that I haven't seen much of before…they mostly sell revenue control systems. Someone said that its all about staying power – if they can make it a few years, maybe someone will buy their stuff.
ACS has an oxygen bar. All the hung over drunks are there trying to feel better.
I had a long conversation with someone who is a hanger on at Federal APD. (Not an employee but seems to always be about.
He was concerned that there aren't many, if any, US companies that are in the payment processing business. He felt that the parking business should be leading the pack in automated processing using AVI or the like. Only in a couple of cases are the tags used on toll roads accepted at parking garages but there are millions of tags out there, and it should be a relatively easy interface.
I noted that the problem usually isn't technical, but political. Toll roads control billions of dollars. They really don't want other companies in their back offices. Oh well, time will tell.
I'm going out to look around again and I'll get back to you with more. Lunch was good –make it yourself sandwiches.
JVH
Toll tags and car parks. The place that really seems to have got these two together is Portugal. The national toll tag Via Verde has been integrated into car park operations successfully. I understand that the biggest technical problem was making sure that a vehicle with a tag in lane one was read in lane one, not lane 1,2,3... With toll plazas on expressways there is more space but with a car park things are pretty close. Anyway, they have solved it and it works.
Posted by: Peter Guest | May 18, 2009 at 01:32 AM