Today we’re looking at the term free flow, which even the Cambridge dictionary has only recently clarified.
So, what exactly does this nowadays trendy term mean and what made it so?
The expression “free flow” means an unhindered, literally free flowing system that facilitates the lives of service providers and it’s users by the means of a range of IT solutions. Free flow systems today are more relevant than ever and not only for providing a smoother user experience and speeding up processes but also as a result of allowing said processes to work contact- or touchless. This is especially important as due to the pandemic everyday tasks such as pushing a button to retrieve a parking ticket from the dispenser may be a means of transferring the virus.
The need to adapt to the virus has brought developments in many areas at an incredible pace over the past year, and this has certainly been the case in the transport industry.
Free flow systems in the traffic sector are enabled by vehicles identified using number plate recognition technology (instead of using tickets or tokens), where the license plate number serves as a reference for transactions in connection with a given vehicle. Payment systems are operated automatically 24/7 without human intervention, whether it is a tolling, congestion charging, parking or traffic control system, so that all functions are available without interrupting the journey, on the move, as part of the free flow system.
The transformation brought by free flow eliminates barriers and gates aimed at disrupting the flow of traffic. Let’s take a look at motorways; nowadays free flow solutions are replacing the long-established gated systems (like the ones operating in Italy or Croatia) with e-ticketing. E-tickets can be bought online – even on the go – using the license plate number as the reference for payment. Enforcement is done using cameras over the motorway, capturing the license plate and category of vehicles passing by and matching the information with the payment details, providing altogether an effective way to get rid of queues before the tollgates.
Next generation traffic enforcement can be enabled using free flow systems by placing cameras at key traffic junctions and processing the footage with video analytics and license plate recognition. This way the obstruction of traffic by the police pulling over vehicles can be avoided. hate waiting in morning traffic jams or queuing at parking machines.
The parking sector is also impacted by the recent efforts to introduce free flow systems. Parking sites operating on pay-by-plate basis are going barrier and contactless all thanks to the new technology. All it takes is registering incoming and leaving vehicles based on license plate numbers and matching the stay with payment data attached to the license plate number. As ALPR-based payment and enforcement are enabled combined with mobile payment solutions and parking applications that are spreading and gaining popularity, ticketing can also become a thing of the past. Free flow eliminates barriers and thereby congestion on entry and exit of parking lots, just as making access cards obsolete by handling exceptions using custom parking rule sets for the vehicle lists.
Streamlining payment is also an aspect of free flow
A process is only free flow if all of its elements are free flow. With the recent boom of mobile applications and e-wallet solutions, toll road usage and parking fee payments can be fully automated, even to the point where usage fees no longer need to be paid in advance. As free flow systems are data-driven software suits, any and all payment solutions may be freely associated with them.
Data driven systems
It is important to emphasize that free flow systems are not necessarily the best choice for all scenarios. Free flow systems rely heavily on a uniform way of vehicle identification, that is unique to each vehicle and can be easily obtained under normal traffic circumstances. In most cases vehicles are identified by reading their license plate number (via ALPR). Free flow systems use this piece of information as reference when gathering payment, owner or other information of the vehicle from external databases. In environments where license plates are physically neglected, have lots of different variants or are not used as a point of reference in databases, free flow systems will not deliver the expected results. Let us take parking enforcement as an example; even if you have the license plate number of a vehicle, you cannot retrieve payment information for the vehicle if parking does not use the license plate number as reference. Also, if there is no register that contains the owner information of a vehicle (license plate number), or it is not accessible for some reason, it is impossible to enforce rules and collect fines. On the other hand, if quality databases exist and can be accessed by 3rd party systems, then enforcement and even collection can be operated automatically to some extent. Another advantage of free flow system is data processing being continuous and fully automatic. This means that operators will have a clear picture of what exactly is happening within the confines of their operation at any given point of time.
Integration
A big advantage of free flow systems is that they can come as an upgrade to existing traffic or parking systems, because they only need cameras, a local server and internet to work. In most cases operation of existing infrastructure is only slightly obstructed while installing the hardware equipment necessary for free flow systems.
To sum it up, free flow systems offer users the greatest convenience and freedom of movement by allowing operators to automate manual processes. The high degree of automation of free flow systems also speed up the flow of the traffic by omitting needless barriers and other obstacles of the processes, thereby elevating the user experience. Installation and maintenance of free flow systems tend to be on the economical side due to the less hardware infrastructure needed and most processes being handled online, using software.
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