Land of ITS opportunities

Geographically, Russia, the largest country in the world, is vast. So too are the opportunities for the global ITS community, which is why ITS Russia has been actively promoting the country and the opportunities that abound there

75 ITS Russia is reaching out around the world. In October, at the 17th 6456 ITS World Congress in Busan, South Korea, a cooperative agreement was signed with 560 ITS America to promote and strengthen research, educational, and commercial cooperation in the ITS field among the two associations and their members.

A couple of weeks earlier, an official 75 ITS Russia delegation held very successful meetings with 556 ITS Japan and industry stakeholders there. Meanwhile, at the beginning of September, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with 374 Ertico - ITS Europe, which will last for three years, to increase cooperation in the field of ITS. That agreement follows on from several years of working closely together, primarily through the 1816 European Union-funded SIMBA II project which served to strengthen road transport research cooperation and through which a number of successful projects were developed in Russia.

Vladimir Kryuchkov, CEO of ITS Russia, is working hard to cement cooperation, not just with ITS associations around the world, but also international companies. The fact is, he says, that the ITS industry in Russia is probably the most attractive market in the world since it is in the early stages of development and there is therefore huge potential.

Kryuchkov quantifies that statement: "It is estimated that by 2015, the global ITS market will be worth e313 billion and, for instance, Europe will account for e140 billion of that," he says. "Now, if you take the ITS market in Russia, in 2009 it was worth just e0.3 billion. So there is huge potential for investment and for mutual contacts with the international ITS community to become involved in the four main areas in which Russia is looking to develop and deploy systems - smart cars, smart cities, smart roads and multimodal cooperative mobility systems."

Natural bridge

 ITS Russia

ITS Russia is a public private-partner organisation which unites political, intellectual, technical, financial and administrative resources in order to develop secure, safe, efficient and environmentally friendly movement of goods and people. It initiates and gives scientific and research support to ITS project deployments, accumulates cutting-edge expertise, provides a platform for stakeholders to collaborate and contributes to public-private cooperation understand the sheer scale of what is involved, Kryuchkov suggests that the first thing people understand when they think of Russia is that it is a natural bridge between East and West. "There are opportunities to develop solutions for the transportation of goods and people between European and Asian countries such as China, Japan and Korea," he says. "There is huge potential to develop corridors, and I am not just talking about roads. Russia has very large sea ports, inland waterways and rail infrastructure, so there is enormous potential to develop multimodal corridors that take advantage of Russia's unique position as a natural bridge between east and west." To underline the scale of that, Russia has over 930,000km (574,000 miles) of roads, 85,500km (53,000 miles) of railways, over 100,000km (62,000 miles) of inland waterways and over 1,200 airports, as well as major public transit operations including metro, bus, trams and so on. However, in general, ITS deployments are sporadic and isolated, but that is going to change - and fast.

It's worth noting Russia is very well advanced in one key area on which many advanced ITS systems can be developed,. The country's Glonass 24-satellite navigation constellation has been fully upgraded and is now operational. What that will mean for the global market is that navigation systems will become much more accurate. As Kryuchkov points out, Glonass is not in competition with the American GPS system - rather they will complement each other and provide better, more accurate and faster positions.

Game changer Glonass will provide additional value both for equipment manufacturers and their customers around the world, Kryuchkov says. "In terms of the global navigation market, and the ITS applications that can developed around it and built upon it, it is no exaggeration to say that Glonass is a real game changer." Back to Russian needs, and not least a determination to cut its high road fatality rates. The Russian ERA Glonass (Emergency Reaction for road Accidents using Glonass) will achieve full-scale deployment next year in order to reduce deaths and injuries on roads throughout Russia. And not just that - rapidly increasing volumes of cross-border traffic in recent years have resulted in successful cooperation with Europe to coordinate the deployment of ERA Glonass in Russia and eCall in Europe to make both systems fully interoperable and compatible. "We are, and have been, working closely with Europe so that we will have a seamless cross-border emergency call service," says Kryuchkov.

In terms of seeking partnerships and cooperation with ITS companies, one of the major functions of ITS Russia is to act as an interface between Russian ideas and technology and international ones. As Kryuchkov put it, "We are actively seeking to help international companies to find the right partner, or project, and take advantage of the vast potential that exists in Russia."
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Major Russian projects

National road safety programme
Adopted in 2006, the Russian state strategy for road safety targeted, by 2012, a 50 per cent decrease in fatal road traffic accidents, as compared to 2004, and a 10 per cent decrease of accidents involving personal injury. The strategy was based on an estimated 54,000 lives being saved throughout the programme with a positive socio-economic effect of over e626 billion.

ITS Moscow
The ITS Moscow: Road Infrastructure and 'Smart' vehicles project assumes future deep modernisation and enlargement of existing ITS services, and their integration into the unique centralised dispatching, information and traffic control centre. The main challenge for the project is the creation of the cooperative information exchange system which will collect and disseminate data for traffic and safety management in the city. The project is in the final stage of approval with implementation planned for 2011-2014. An important part of the pilot project includes cooperation with car manufactures and insurers for promoting safe, secure and green vehicles in Moscow and the Moscow region.

Sochi-2014 'Smart' city
Sochi will welcome the Winter Olympic Games in 2014 and construction work is getting under way. The creation of the infrastructure for the event requires the modernisation of the entire urban and inter-urban road network and ITS services to provide the transportation before, during and after the Olympic Games. Currently, the monitoring and control system, based on the Glonass navigation system, is being implemented. At the same time, services such as an integrated payment collection system and navigation infrastructure are being developed.

'Smart' roads
Development of road tolling constitutes a large part of the Russian Federal Target Programme, 'Russian Transport System Modernisation 2006-2010', a strategic, long-term undertaking of the Federal Transport Agency over the period 2010-2015 that will form the backbone of transport strategy of Russia until 2030. The aim is to create some 9,000km (5,500 miles) of tolled roads by 2030. The construction of the Moscow - Don (M4) and Moscow - St. Petersburg motorways is in progress. Meanwhile traffic management systems are currently being deployed to contribute to the development of 'smart' roads in Russia. For instance, advanced hardware and software systems have been incorporated into the management of the ring road being constructed around St. Petersburg.

International transport corridors
Russia is a natural bridge between East and West and the development of international transport corridors is a major focus. They will not only strengthen transit and investment potential of the country, but ensure the execution of the European agreement on international autobahns. Russia's Federal Transport Agency has a programme for strategic long-term development that provides for the construction and reconstruction of 1,380 km of federal roads corresponding to the trans-European transport corridors N2, N9, A1, and linking Europe to Western China.