MHI to ease traffic congestion

(MHI) has received an order from the

to supply 700,000 upgraded in-vehicle units for the country's Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system.

The units to be supplied, for the first time anywhere in the world, enable use of contact and non-contact IC-chip smart cards. Supply of the new in-vehicle units will commence in 2008 and continue over a seven-year period.

The order was placed through MHI Engine System Asia (MHIES-A), MHI's Singapore subsidiary. In 1995 MHI received an order from Singapore for the world's first ERP system, and to date the company has delivered more than 2.2 million in-vehicle units and 51 ERP gantry sets.

Singapore's ERP system is used to collect tolls from vehicles entering the city centre. Congestion is eased as vehicles are not required to stop and tolls are automatically collected from the vehicles in all traffic lanes.

The system adopts the technology to automatically identify vehicles and uses a sub-microwave radio frequency (2.45GHz) for communication between roadside antennas in the gantries and the in-vehicle units passing through them.