Ensuring the flow of traffic and improving road safety, implementing ‘intelligent’ technologies and supporting the development of new uses are major challenges for cities and regions. Thanks to our Mobility department and its many areas of expertise and integrator skills, Equans is positioned as a partner of choice for the renovation of tunnels or for ‘intelligent’ road equipment. A quick overview with Maxime De Bel, Department Manager Roads.
Connecting energy transition and smart mobility
In Belgium, the activities of the Equans Mobility department divide into three segments: public lighting, tunnels and intelligent roads. In Flanders and in Wallonia, driven by the energy transition, our teams are replacing traditional lights with intelligent LED lighting. These new lights are equipped with a controller that enables the management of dimming calendars and switch-on commands, as well as remote monitoring. This ‘intelligence’, combined with the LED’s energy-efficiency, offers up to 70% savings in comparison to old equipment.
Making roads ‘intelligent’
Equans would like to take the customer a step further by using this controller to offer a generic platform on which several applications may be interconnected. Maxime De Bel: “For example, we may want to strengthen the lighting where the bin lorry is working, which requires the integration of several data sources. The aim is to offer intelligent applications integrated between different trades, as we already do, for example, for SIBELGA for smart lighting.” The gains for the customer are considerable: greater comfort, exponential operational efficiency and controlled costs..
Project diversity
It’s possible to go much further in integration, as the Walloon capital has done since 2019 by investing in an Intelligent Traffic System aiming to improve the traffic flow and facilitate multi-modality. Equans installed ANPR cameras on the entry routes, a dynamic display, and parking as well as pollution sensors... In a later phase, we were awarded additional contracts for the installation of cyclist and pedestrian sensors to monitor soft mobility, and recently for vehicle access control in pedestrian areas. In Brussels, our teams also surrounded the Low Emission Zone with nearly 400 ANPR cameras.
Maxime De Bel: “We took part in the European C-Roads pilot project, a communicating road enabling direct dialogue with vehicles. A test section was equipped on the E24/E40 link. With the TRADEMEX project, Equans is taking part in the counting and classification of vehicles on Walloon roads (structural network) and with its partner Macq, is developing a model that will allow us to find out the traffic density in real time on the 8,000 sections in the Walloon road network. Another pilot project enables us to dynamically weigh trucks based on the deformation of bridge decks!”
Through these projects, Equans is positioning itself as the Walloon Region's partner for the development of the infrastructure of the future. Furthermore, Equans is very active in the deployment of charging points for electric vehicles, including the back office, for provinces or municipalities.
Multidisciplinary tunnel renovation
Mostly dating back to the 70s, the tunnels in the three regions must be thoroughly renovated and upgraded to current standards (fire, RGIE - Belgian General Regulation on Electrical Installations). What is Equans’s strength? Without a doubt, its mastery of all the services involved in equipping a tunnel, from lighting to fire protection systems and automatic accident detection and ventilation. As a multi-service integrator, we offer the customer the possibility to speak to a single point of contact for all the services and their interfaces. Equans is therefore the ideal partner, both for cross-functional contracts concerning the same service in several tunnels, and for vertical contracts consisting of the comprehensive, multi-disciplinary renovation of the same tunnel.
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