A Latvian subsidiary of Fima, the company providing intelligent engineering solutions which is controlled by the US capital, has signed a contract with the Transport Department of Riga Municipality. By this contract the company undertakes to set up a modern traffic flow counting system on the largest and the most recently built Dienvidu Bridge. This system allows collecting data on the traffic volume that later will be used to analyze traffic efficiency and to search for the methods to increase this efficiency.

“The Dienvidu Bridge that connects two southern districts of Riga is one of the most expensive projects carried out in the capital of Latvia during the past few years. The cost of its construction was almost 1 milliard euros. Therefore the city municipality wants to test the traffic load of this bridge”, says Vytautas Zinkevičius, Development Director of Fima.

According to V. Zinkevičius, one of the most reliable vehicular traffic counting detectors that are deployed in the majority of countries in Western Europe will be installed on the 500-metre long bridge by Fima. The system offered by Fima operates on the basis of the infrared beams and one of its benefits in comparison to other systems performing the same traffic measurement function is the possibility to deploy it on road signs or other structures and thus avoid the cutting of the road paving. Besides, slow traffic or poor weather conditions have no impact on the accuracy of the data received by the system.

The total of six infrared-based detectors will be set up on the Dienvidu Bridge by the employees of Fima’s subsidiary in Latvia. The equipment will be used to count the vehicular traffic passing along the bridge, and the system will enable not only the counting of the traffic but also the measurement of speed and the determination of the car size. Information about the traffic flow will be stored on the computer database.

The whole traffic measurement system will be powered by the street illumination network that is lit up at nights. During the day the system will be powered by the batteries that are charged at night. It is planned that the implementation of this solution will require the usage of the low energy consuming equipment.

The traffic counting systems have already been mounted on other four bridges in Riga and in other locations, but the fixed traffic counting system installed by Fima will be the first system of such type installed in Latvia.