AFK's subsidiary Sitronics won a city government tender to develop and upgrade the intelligent traffic and transportation management system, according to several businessmen in the transportation sector.
A Mayor's Office official and Sitronics vice president Irina Lanina both confirmed the information. The company will develop an intelligent transportation system and create a central road traffic management center, another source said.
In the city's transportation program, 6.26 billion rubles ($220 million) has been budgeted for the system's development. Sitronics will receive that money at the end of the year, after it has completed the work, Vedomosti was told.
A source close to the Mayor's Office said Sitronics would modernize the existing traffic light management system — called Start — through the purchase of new traffic lights, sensors and video monitoring systems, and modernize the management of the city's mass transit by installing satellite navigation equipment in its rolling stock.
"It is only modernizing the existing system," said Alexander Ovanesov of Strategy Partners.
The contract with the city is worth an amount equal to Sitronics' total quarterly revenue. The city and the company began working together only recently, Lanina said. Sitronics has had only one other major contract with the city — installing the electronic pass system in the metro for about $100 million.
No major international companies were invited to take part in the contract bidding, said a spokesman for a consortium made up of transportation software and systems developers AA Traffic of Singapore, French STI and British Verrus. A source close to the Mayor's Office said it was a closed tender and participants had to have the permission of the FSB and Federal Guard Service to work on government roads.
An official in the Mayor's Office said Navigation Information Systems Glonass, an affiliate of AFK Sistema, prepared the feasibility study for the central passenger transportation management center — one of the major elements of the new system. It is also the operator of the Glonass satellite tracking network, which is essential to the project.