Governments throughout the world are struggling with how to cope with rising traffic levels, rising oil prices, rising congestion and rising environmental concerns. City centre congestion charging is, in different forms, throughout the world seen as a solution for some of these issues. IBM today announces that is has been awarded a new contract by the Swedish Road Administration to help it build, integrate, implement and run its new congestion charging system in the City of Stockholm.
IBM is a bringing to this project a formidable global experience in the design and delivery of complex IT solutions, having taken part in the delivery of the first electronic road pricing system in the world in Singapore in 1998. IBM is investing in the widespread future applications of road pricing whether they are to benefit the environment, reduce congestion, or raise funds to improve public transport.
The project is a recognition of IBM`s deep industry knowledge within the public sector as well as in the area of congestion charging solutions. It also shows that the breadth of IBM is brought to bear to design business processes, as a key integrator in complex projects with many partners and deliver different elements such as business strategy and processes, as well as hardware and software. At the same time it proves that on-demand is a key element in projects where future needs have to be met by a flexible set-up. It is possible to scale the back office and the call centre capability to meet the needs at different times during the delivery.
Elsewhere in Europe, London was the first major European capital to introduce congestion charging. In November 2003 IBM Business Consulting Services Transport Development group in the UK published a report conducted by MORI Research that states that almost two-thirds of those surveyed as a representative example of the UK population supports urban congestion charging. Some of the key findings of this survey revealed:
* 63% of people questioned by MORI support the idea of urban congestion charging schemes for large towns and cities in the UK.
* Support for urban congestion charging could be jeopardised if many non-integrated urban road charging schemes develop in absence of national standards.
* Central government should take responsibility for development of national approach to schemes based on common standards to lower cost of implementation.
* UK needs to act now to avoid the situation emerging in Europe where a number of schemes are not interoperable, causing delays and additional cost.
*A co-ordinated national approach would allow local authorities to implement congestion charging schemes efficiently as local citizens demand.
For more information, please see http://www.ibm.com/news/uk/2003/11/uk_111103.html.
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