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Indian firm to control London traffic
RASHMEE Z AHMED
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2003 09:49:24 PM ]
LONDON: The British capital is beginning the countdown to its ambitious
congestion charging scheme, the largest and most technologically
sophisticated traffic control system in the world, but it is an Indian
software company that is nervously awaiting D-day.
Mumbai-based Mastek is the company that created the software brain that will
make or break London mayor Ken Livingstone's 200-million-pound plan.
The five-pound per day congestion charge, arguably the biggest shake-up in
British motoring for a generation, goes into operation next Monday (February
17).
If successful, it could be copied by 43 other British cities and many
traffic-clogged capitals around the world.
Sudhakar Ram, president of Mastek, who arrived here on Monday, told TNN the
18-month project was the most "complex we have ever done".
Mayor Livingstone says it is "unsurprising" an Indian software company was
chosen for his pet project because "Indians are very good technically".
The software integration project, awarded to Mastek despite strong local
competition from a leading British company Logica, will enforce a
21-square-kilometre congestion charging zone in an area visited by an
estimated 40,000 vehicles an hour every single weekday.
The scheme, which is distinct from Singapore and Oslo, the other two
long-running successful examples, is expected to be only as good as its
software.
A spy ring of 700 cameras around the city centre are supposed accurately to
read the licence plates of vehicles driving into the congestion charge zone.
These highly-literate cameras relay the information to a secret computer
nerve centre, which waits for payment till midnight, after which it sends
lists of defaulting number plates to Britain's Driving Vehicles Licensing
Authority (DVLA) in Swansea, Wales.
The DVLA consults its records and sends out penalty notices, expected to
yield a hefty and welcome 30 million pounds in fines.
But the apparently simple chain reaction was the result of an intensive
process of prototype, pilots and pure brainpower 7000 km away in Mumbai,
where software engineers worked out just how to integrate all the different
applications and wrote the core software.
The task, described as devilishly difficult, was distinct from the
tried-and-tested radio-frequency tag and smart cards employed by Singapore's
much-smaller Electronic Road Pricing scheme.
With no Oslo-style toll gates and booths impeding Londoners' inner-city
journeys, Mastek had to use character-recognition software within video
cameras to read vehicle licence plates. All the applications had to be
integrated onto one platform, DotNet, now the world's largest Microsoft
project.
More than 100 Mastek employees are currently holed up in London preparing
for the system to go live. They will stay for the next couple of months,
dealing with glitches.
London transport officials say the congestion charging zone is equivalent to
25 busy motorway lanes.
The sheer ambition of the scheme means there is lots that could go wrong.
But with just days to go, Mastek insists that the buck for any problems with
London's congestion charge does not stop in Mumbai.
"There are many different companies involved in different ways," says Ram.
As the system settles in, just a quarter of the Mumbai staff will stay
on-site. But the company's 1500-back-end staff in India will continue
project maintenance over the next seven, crucial years.
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