Marcel Bijlsma (Mobidot): “I find it fascinating to see how competing parties develop standards together”.

“We support apps for automatically keeping travel expense claim data, but also the app B-riders that encourages people to cycle, for instance. We would like to develop new services for our users, and the Talking Traffic Partnership provides opportunities to do so. One of our ideas is to link a large group of cyclists to the new intelligent traffic control systems to give them priority at traffic lights and information about the time it takes until the light turns green. We hope that this provides better service to our users. The Partnership includes parties that are interesting to us, and with whom we could work together. Together, we have even more data at our disposal. We would like to share our traveller profiles and our data about traveller behaviour. Our cycling data is particularly interesting.

We believe it is important to join new developments in the Netherlands. Improving mobility together benefits society while at the same time it offers an opportunity to strengthen the position of the Netherlands internationally. I find it fascinating how parties within Talking Traffic - competitors as well as public and private parties - surpass themselves and together develop new standards so as to be able to take a big leap forward.”

Lode Caenepeel (FLIR): “Open testing ground”

“With the FLIR-ITS department (part of an American company specialised in thermal cameras), our smart cameras in the infrastructure contribute to smoother and safer traffic. We do not only show cars, but bicycles and pedestrians as well. Our cameras already pass on data about traffic volumes and unsafe situations to Siemens and Vialis, among others. A clever combination of camera and GPS data creates a complete picture of the real situation on the road. Our data could be used by many more parties than is currently the case. That is why we would like to participate in the Talking Traffic Partnership.
In the Partnership, we hope to learn which data other parties need, in which form and of which quality, so that we can tailor our data to service providers.

It is good that so many parties in a vertical chain in the Netherlands are working together openly to ultimately provide road users with better information and to improve the flow of traffic. Such testing grounds are very important for the development of good innovative products. I expect that within the Talking Traffic Partnership we can develop innovations with a group of different companies and test them in practice. Such an open testing ground is much more difficult to realise in Belgium.”