IT solutions for transportation are the future of fleets!
According to most experts, Russia is ahead of some European countries in terms of the pace of transport digitalization. Perhaps this is due to the fact that in the domestic expanses it is necessary to organize a closer control over the work of equipment and personnel. Moscow and St. Petersburg are deservedly considered the centers of Russia's digital transformation, but every day telecommunications technologies are penetrating deeper into the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. In regions where intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are already in use, accident rates are decreasing and road capacity is increasing. Today, it-technologies in transportation are developing in several directions:
- Ensuring transportation safety
- Improving the quality of service for passengers
- Improvement of road infrastructure
- Commercial transportation monitoring
- Unmanned transportation
- Ensuring transportation safety
- Improving the quality of service for passengers
- Improvement of road infrastructure
- Commercial transportation monitoring
- Unmanned transportation
Secure IT solutions for transportation
IT transportation and the Internet of Things help minimize the impact of human error in passenger and freight transportation safety. Smart systems will not allow a drunk driver to drive, make sure that a person does not fall asleep, talk on the phone or get distracted while driving. IT-solutions will warn the driver about the appearance of a pedestrian on the way, about leaving the lane, about a possible collision with any object.
Alexander Lependin, head of video analytics at MONTRANS Group of Companies: “The intelligent development of Montrans DVR helps to solve many problems of car fleets. The main one is to ensure safety for drivers and for other road users. In addition, smart cameras will track attempts to steal fuel, stop aggressive driving style and increase the driving culture of employees. These factors allow the fleet to achieve significant cost savings.”
Improving the quality of service for passengers
It is already possible to travel on any type of public transport in Moscow using a single card “Troika”. Navigation systems provide priority travel for buses, and passengers can track the necessary route in mobile applications. The MaaS unified digital platform is becoming increasingly popular. This platform combines many services that help passengers create the most rational route at an affordable price. Electronic seat reservation and remote ticketing have been introduced. Cab aggregators in the Uber system and carsharing services are operating,
Road infrastructure transformation
Every day Russian roads are getting smarter. Soon there will be no places in major cities that are not monitored by photo-video cameras. Intelligent traffic lights are being installed at busy intersections, which themselves change the time intervals depending on the traffic congestion. These automated traffic management systems (ATMS) improve throughput by 10% to 60%. Meteo-monitoring systems are being installed on highways and in cities to help drivers navigate weather conditions and choose the right speed limit, and utility services are getting snow removal equipment onto the roads on time. Modern weight and dimensional control is being installed at checkpoints, which does not delay the passage of trucks. Digitalization of the entire road infrastructure is taking place: data collection and storage centers, control and response centers are being created.
Commercial vehicle monitoring
Satellite telematics equipment collects all data on what is happening with the vehicle. Starting with the location of the equipment, fuel consumption, distance traveled, parking and work under load, and ending with monitoring the technical condition of the vehicle, tire pressure, temperature in refrigerators, the number of body lifts and the drivers' work and rest regime. And all this array of data would not be processed and used effectively if it were not for analytics systems. Implementation of it solutions for transport help to derive summary reports from millions of indicators and optimize processes, thanks to which it is immediately clear: how the equipment works, where there are weaknesses and where there are opportunities for growth.
Mikhail Yakimov, Director of the Institute of Transport Planning of the Russian Academy of Transport: “Russia has an excess of tools, technologies and hardware. Processing and storage of a large amount of information is relevant for fleets now. Many owners of cloud services are afraid to get into users' personal data and are afraid of information leaks from databases. In the near future, the Ministry of Transportation needs to develop a regulator that will help to work with databases without fear.”
The public sector is just beginning to implement analytics, but commercial companies have been putting their IT developments and solutions into practice for several years. Cloud services impartially (without the influence of human factor) control the work of vehicle fleets and provide enterprise management with ready analytical reports. For example, MONTRANS.ONLINE software completely changes the approach to logistics company management.
Stanislav Emelyanov, managing partner of MONTRANS Group of Companies: The innovative MONTRANS.ONLINE service is not just a transport monitoring program. “Aiti” solution controls the work of transport and personnel in automatic mode 24/7 and processes a large volume of indicators, converting them into final analytical reports. This service helps minimize fleet costs. Management promptly responds to all changes in the work of the enterprise. Company owners can forecast business processes, calculate costs and economic effect”.
By the way, electronic waybills are being integrated into the MONTRANS.ONLINE program. From March 1, 2023, transportation vouchers will be issued digitally in Russia. Waybills for freight and passenger transportation will also be provided in electronic format. Electronic document flow will reduce the time and money for issuing the necessary permits. In addition, a single database with data on the movement of vehicles will make it possible to study and automate the direction of traffic flows and loading of highways, which will help plan the construction of new roads and roadside service organizations.
Unmanned IT transportation
The next stage of digitalization is drones. Today, IT transportation is the most promising and the most challenging area. Such solutions can be realized only if the above-mentioned areas of digital transformation are successfully implemented: security, monitoring, road infrastructure and service. According to some experts, to create conditions on highways for the movement of drones, it will be necessary to invest tens of millions of rubles per 1 kilometer of road in infrastructure. Today, many fleets create vehicle doubles. That is, the dispatcher controls and manages real cars, watching their digital clones on the monitor. In the future, cloud models may well become prototypes of drones. The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation has developed a program for testing unmanned vehicles on public roads until 2024.
