People and businesses want transport that is safe, cost-effective, reliable, convenient and respectful of their environment. ITS (Intelligent transport systems) can save time, money and lives and protects public health, townscapes and landscapes – if they are properly planned and implemented with those benefits in mind. It does this through the application of information processing and communication processing technologies to road transport – car, truck, bus, tram, metro – and the road/rail transport infrastructure.
Transport and travel are essentials for everyday living, working, commuting, learning, shopping, leisure and, for companies, trading and distribution of goods. Virtually every person in the world, and every organisation, is a transport user or dependent in some way on transport. This is true whether people are homebound or based at static locations, or whether they are physically on the move on the roads - car drivers, truck and delivery operators, public transport vehicle drivers and passengers, cyclists or pedestrians. They all want smooth, safe and convenient journeys.
As economies, populations, migration, commerce and consumer demand grow, so does the pressure on transport infrastructure and systems, from its users and others who depend on it. This has become increasingly evident over the last few decades, with increasing road congestion and overcrowding on public transport. The emphasis is now on ensuring that users benefit from reliable and resilient transport. The solution lies in technology – specifically ITS – working in a policy context.
The central feature of ITS is its ability to deliver in real-time, traffic and travel information and a flexible means of network control. It is a key enabler of sustainable transport system which:
The way that ITS operates is often invisible (buried cabling or wireless communications). While people may experience some form of ITS every day (for example, traffic signals or variable message signs on roads, or searching for travel information on websites or via their smartphones), most will not realise how widespread ITS is in their daily lives. Nor will they appreciate how much they can benefit from the ways in which it makes their transport more user friendly.
ITS practitioners (including road network operators, managers, planners, engineers and surveyors) need to understanding the benefits of ITS and being be able to argue convincingly for investment in these technologies – often to a non-technical audiences such as governments, the media and local communities. This highlights the importance of gathering firm evidence of benefits through monitoring and evaluation of the outcomes of ITS deployments – and using the results in the appraisal of new projects. (See Project Appraisal)
More and more ITS schemes have been, or are being, evaluated, resulting in an extensive and growing literature on costs and benefits, including how to assess them – and understanding exactly what the benefits are and who experience them. See Evaluation. Informed awareness of ITS can be a critical factor in decision making by national, regional and local governments, directors of transport operating and related companies, investors and developers looking for locations for expansion, and the management and financial consultants advising public- and private-sector clients.
Its membership is open, with the aim of bringing together, and meeting the needs of, not only ITS professionals, but also transport planners, researchers, manufacturers and suppliers of ITS systems, decision-makers in public- and private-sector client organisations, as well as the transport-using public. This last is a very important audience, whose needs for ITS information are not always well catered for.
Members have access to its website library and information services.
The cost of physically extending existing infrastructure – particularly in built-up areas – needs to be assessed against competing demands for transport investment and other priorities. Decision makers also need to be confident of being able to manage new roads efficiently to gain the optimum benefits from them. This can be achieved by planning to install ITS technologies at the outset of a new construction. (See Deployment Strategies)
To a large extent developing economies can draw on the experience of the developed world in obtaining the benefits of proven systems without having had to bear the full costs of bringing them to market. This may also provide an opportunity to create employment through commercial partnerships between local businesses and foreign suppliers. Care needs to be taken to ensure that any ITS deployment is well adapted to the local context to ensure success and maximise benefit. For example, direct transfer of ITS technology rarely works without some modification to take account of technical and maintenance skills levels and other factors – such as the environmental and cultural context, public readiness and acceptability. Poor road and vehicle maintenance, and poor driving skills, lead to high levels of road traffic accidents – nearly three quarters of all those in the world.
Developing and emerging economies have a large proportion of vulnerable road users (VRUs) – for example, pedestrians, cyclists, hand-carts, cycle-rickshaws and animal transport. According to the Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, over 18% of all road traffic accident deaths involve vulnerable road users. The challenge is to make ITS technologies and applications that are flexible enough to respond to this traffic mix.
Most important is the early development of a policy and technical framework for ITS deployment in a local context. This will set out in advance the principles for specifying and choosing individual ITS products and services that meet transport needs as efficiently as possible. It will also consider the institutional capacity to work across organisations to install and maintain advanced technology – to secure maximum benefit to the economy and long-term gains in efficiency. (See Deployment Strategies)
ITS deployment in road network operations helps to provide users with better managed urban and interurban roads. Congestion is a huge source of delay and unreliability in travel times and journeys. Its cost is high – and though this impacts directly on those using the roads, it also impacts on the general public in terms of increased transportation costs for personal mobility and the price of goods.
US research indicates that traffic congestion-related emissions in a single year are valued at approximately $31 billion, with an additional $60 billion related costs in wasted time and fuel. A major share of the costs of USA truck congestion ($23 billion in 2010) was passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices of goods and services. Developing and emerging economies are particularly susceptible to congestion – with queues often many kilometres in length. It is estimated that the Philippines is losing ₱2.4 billion (pesos) a day in potential income due to traffic congestion.
Road network monitoring plays a critical role in collecting data on route condition and performance information. The quality of the data derived from ITS applications is key in enabling transport planners to analyse the problems of congestion in detail and develop specific solutions based on experiences of travellers and freight operators. ITS products and services which make use of data to provide:
ITS benefits different groups of users:
Everyone benefits from ITS applications that:
Some advantages of ITS come at a perceived cost to the user. There can be a trade-off. The underlying issues for an individual – and for society as a whole – are “is it worth it” and “do I get value for money”? For example:
A particular local issue for public transport users is the last 1km-2km stage of their journey – between the last stop and their final destination (home, workplace, shops or leisure activities). Journey planners can help by factoring in:
For rural public transport users, dependent largely on buses, the basic communications infrastructure needed to give them urban-style real-time passenger information is typically lacking. This is because of the lack of incentives for operators to install these for relatively small numbers of passengers – and the high cost of installing displays at remote bus stops.
Potential solutions include crowdsourcing, with smartphone-equipped passengers acting as both providers and consumers of travel information via a website. Their satellite positioning-enabled devices can be used to upload information on the bus on which they are travelling for the benefit of others.
Disabled drivers need reliable information on the availability of appropriate accessible parking places near to their planned destination. New travel applications are being developed for smartphones which use GPS locational technology, parking space sensors and two-way messaging to enable disabled drivers on the move to find and pay for disabled parking. An example is the City of Westminster’s free “ParkRight” application (See https://www.westminster.gov.uk/park) which provides real-time information on over 3,000 parking bays in London’s West End. It can filter bays for disabled parking, provide information on operating hours and tariffs, interact with vehicle satellite navigation systems, and allow users to pay for and manage their parking sessions.
Public transport users with mobility difficulties, need to be able to board and travel on public transport safely and comfortably – and they need access to travel information in a suitable format, so they can plan their journeys in advance. This includes information about interchanges and transport terminals (including the availability of elevators) and arrival times of buses, trams and trains – for transport services offering suitable access for their specific mobility needs. For example, passengers in wheelchairs need up-to-date information about any impediments to their planned journeys. Accessibility information is provided on many websites for travel planning purposes covering accessible drop-off points, parking, entrances and step free access to stations. In Paris, information on metro stations where elevators are out of action can be accessed before travel. Similarly in the UK, the National Rail Enquiries’ “Station Made Easy” service provides accessibility information for all stations (See http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/sjp/BHM/stationAccessibility.xhtml)
Passengers with mobility problems can be encouraged to make greater use public transport by the introduction of technology. For instance:
SNAPI (See http://www.snapi.org.uk/) has produced a European standard for coding user needs to enable adaptable user interfaces on a range of self-service terminals (such as ticket machines) and automatic gates. The user’s needs are coded onto a contactless smartcard which can be pre-set to request:
The SNAPI reader is connected via a USB cable to a user’s PC (onto which the relevant software has been preloaded) or built into at-station machines. Displays revert to normal on withdrawal of the SNAPI card.
Operators investing in these ITS products benefit – the improved accessibility they offer is good for business, attracting passengers who would not otherwise think of using public transport.
ITS applications impact on the local communities within which they are deployed. Cars, trucks, buses and trains all affect the people living, working, walking, playing or socialising in the area in which they operate. ITS can:
Benefits for some may come at an acceptable or unacceptable cost – depending on the interests of the community or stakeholder groups. Identifying the communities affected is important in identifying who benefits from what ITS measures whether they be:
Many ITS deployments will benefit a number of communities. For example, better freight management can benefit:
For inter-urban roads, the community benefits arise from a whole-system application of ITS whose primary aim is to manage flows in a wider motorway and road network and to manage and reduce the congestion impacts of incidents and emergencies. Community benefits will include reducing traffic, delays, pollution, safety and better emergency response. The stakeholder groups benefitting may be quite dispersed – even people living a few miles from a major highway may experience noise pollution.
In the urban area, the more obvious community benefits from ITS are those arising traffic and mobility demand management. ITS which manages traffic and public transport combine to:
The UTC system introduced in Paris, France, included reducing the waiting time for pedestrians crossing at signals and extending crossing time, and adjusting signal times to suit cyclists. It has made the area safer for pedestrians and cyclists, and at the same time reduced the time which vehicles spend in traffic by 15%.
In Trondheim, Norway, toll ring and traffic management measures were deployed, reducing vehicle traffic in the city centre. The change in mix of traffic on some routes reduced accidents by 60-70%
An electronic parking guidance system was installed at O R Tambo International Airport, South Africa to deal with the significant problems of congestion on the roads leading to the airport and within the airport itself. Major benefits included a 70% reduction in fuel emissions and a reduction in the average time to find a parking space – from 8 minutes to two and a half minutes (See http://www.itsinternational.com/sections/cost-benefit-analysis/features/intelligent-parking-guidance-relieves-congestion-reduces-costs/)
ITS helps policy-makers, transport authorities, road network and public transport operators to do a better job – helping to deliver their transport objectives. For example, if one of the objectives of a city’s transport policy is to:
Investment in ITS can help them to deliver safer and more reliable journeys, reducing the detrimental effect on the environment, giving priority to freight transport, commuter traffic, public transport or pedestrians. It does so by helping to manage a city road network – and balancing many conflicting priorities. These might include the competing needs of residents, commercial retailing, tourism and the environment, as well as ensuring mobility for people without their own personal means of transport and making transport accessible to vulnerable road users.
One of the key benefits of ITS for policy-makers and transport professionals is that, embedded within ITS is the ability to gather and process large amounts of data and information – which can be used in decision-making on future planning and ITS investments. (See Project Appraisal) For example:
Investment in new road infrastructure has been important to accommodate demand but has often been unable to keep pace. ITS has a role to play in ensuring efficient and safe use of the infrastructure – smoothing traffic flows and improving journey times – and can help postpone the need for further new road building. (See Benefits to Road Network Management)
The benefits gained from deploying ITS will be outstripped by traffic growth within a few years, unless the measures are part of a wider mobility and transport policy – for example, including traffic restraint, congestion pricing or public transport priority.
Controlled Motorways use active traffic management to automatically regulate traffic speed limits in real-time in response to prevailing traffic levels on the motorway. It has delivered significant benefits. Drivers perceived that the steady flow of traffic at 50 mph (80 km/hour) resulted in overall time savings in comparison with the stop-start of motorways on which people drive at speeds varying from 30 mph to 90 mph (50 – 145 km/hour). (Case Study: M42 Active Traffic Management)
When the circumstances are , ITS applications – such as route planning, navigation, and VMS signing – can provide useful tools for road users to optimise their journeys.
Improving the efficiency and sustainability of transport is a major goal of all ITS programmes around the world. ITS is commonly deployed to deliver improvements in network capacity, traveller mobility, economic productivity and policy-related goals.
There are significant supply-side (network provider) benefits of using ITS for highways management to make best use of road capacity and increase throughput. For example, lane management have been one of the outstanding successes of ITS. This includes High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, reversible flow lanes, variable speed limits and enforcement systems. These maximise the use of the infrastructure available, saving or postponing the very large costs of expanding road networks. (See Traffic Control Measures)
Capacity, as defined by the US Transportation Research Board, in its Highway Capacity Manual, is the maximum hourly rate at which vehicles or persons may be expected to traverse a given point – or uniform section of a roadway – under prevailing roadway, traffic, and control conditions.
Throughput is defined as the number of persons, goods, or vehicles traversing a roadway section or network per unit time – and so is very closely related to the concept of capacity. (See http://hcm.trb.org/?qr=1)
Improved vehicle control systems (crash avoidance systems) will increase throughput by reducing the headway required between vehicles. They can also help reduce the number of collisions, which means fewer traffic hold-ups. It has been estimated that a three-fold increase in throughput is possible with platooned vehicle operation. A less sophisticated automated highway system might increase throughput:
Improving mobility by reducing delay, minimising congestion and improving travel reliability is a major goal of many ITS applications. (See Traveller Services) The actual efficiency benefit to the traveller depends on the context. For example:
Travel time savings will depend on levels of congestion and available opportunities for diversion. Among the most common measures is delay – which itself can be quantified in different ways – such as:
Direction and route finding information will generally have value regardless of congestion but there may be potential disbenefits from use of unsuitable roads, especially by heavy goods vehicles. (See In-vehicle Systems) Pedestrians can also benefit in terms of reduction in wasted time waiting to cross streets through smart signal controls. (See Safety of Vulnerable Road Users)
Pre-trip traveller information has benefits for journey planning – in terms of better routeing, knowledge of interchange between modes, or overall journey times. Better informed travellers are able to choose alternative routes and modes, switch to public transport, and save time. (See Travel Information Systems)
While travel cost reduction is of interest to all road users, the benefits associated with ITS are most tangible to the operators of vehicle fleets. ITS productivity benefits have been assessed from the perspectives of fleet managers, transport authorities, and toll agencies. ITS options include automatic vehicle location (AVL) and computer aided dispatch (CAD) using sophisticated logistics software and close communications between the dispatcher and the driver. Each individual intervention appears marginal, but the overall effect in journey time reliability and time savings can make the difference between hitting a Just-in-Time delivery slot and missing it. In the USA, advanced routeing and decision-making software and organisation for the routeing of time-sensitive deliveries increased deliveries per driver hour by 24%. (See Freight & Delivery Operations)
In freight transport, there are two separate streams of benefits available from ITS:
The first benefit stream concerns the operation of supply chains using data and information linked with communication technologies. Methods include control systems, vehicle tracking and load monitoring – to:
The second benefit stream concerns reducing the costs of transport operators by providing productivity improvements:
The primary measure of productivity is typically cost savings as a result of an ITS implementation.
Canada’s Pacific coast’S BUS OPERATOR, Metro Vancouver’s TransLink, has gained substantial annual benefits in bus idle time savings from a new business intelligence-based solution. This is built on service running data that was already being captured by its ITS-based fleet management system. It achieved avoidance of costs estimated to be CAN$2.62 million. (See Vancouver Savings on Bus Idle Times)
ITS can support policy objectives such as sustainable transport – for example:
These options are becoming central elements of transport and regional economic policy – with the aim of attracting and maintaining investment and ensuring an attractive working and living environment.
The World Bank reports that every year, over 1.17 million people die in road traffic accidents around the world, most of them – some 70% – in developing countries. Two thirds involve pedestrians – and, of these, one third are children. Over 10 million people are seriously injured each year.
Road traffic accidents cost countries between 1% and 3% of their annual gross national product (GNP) - a particularly heavy burden on those with developing economies.
ITS applications have the potential to significantly reduce road traffic accidents and their impacts in various ways that reduce the number, frequency and severity of incidents. For example ITS applications can:
ITS technologies for improving road safety include:
Performance measures that can be used to assess ITS benefits can be direct or indirect.
Direct measures include overall crash rate, fatality and injury rates – for example, percentage reduction in collisions (but this is difficult to obtain empirically from operational tests since real accidents in field trials are infrequent)
Indirect measures include vehicle speeds, speed variability, the number of traffic violations, percentage reduction in rescue response time and public perceptions.
A few multi-year longitudinal studies have provided reliable before-and-after data on the impact of ITS on accident rates. For example:
Safety benefits from ITS go wider than measurable accidents. The confidence that travel is safe does not come only from measurable benefits such as reducing accidents or collisions and their consequences. The perception of personal safety is also important. Many countries now have policy priorities relating to perceptions of personal safety, whether that is nervousness about traffic, crime, isolation or a wider perception of community safety.
People are fened of traffic, even if they have never been involved in an accident or collision. This fear has societal costs. ITS can:
Access control and area management schemes have been successful in improving the quality of city centres. For example, in the 1990s, ITS-based security measures in the City of London significantly reduced the number of accidents involving pedestrian.
A number of ITS-enabled measures and technologies have an important part to play in delivering safety benefits.
One of the driving forces behind the development of ITS in Europe has been the level of road traffic accidents across the continent.
The European Commission estimates that there are some 100 million cross-border road trips annually within the European Union (EU), and that foreign drivers account for 5% of traffic – but commit 15% of speeding offences. EU countries work together on cross-border road safety enforcement.
Since 7 November 2013, most EU countries have been implementing cross-border enforcement for the riskiest traffic offences – such as, speeding, failing to stop at traffic lights, failure to use seatbelts and drink driving. These account for 75% of road traffic accident deaths in Europe. The enforcement scheme operates through ITS-enabled electronic exchange of national vehicle registration data with other countries. It is estimated that public awareness of the increased likelihood of offenders being caught will save between 350 and 400 road traffic accident deaths a year.
Red-light running is a major traffic safety issue. In the USA, it is accounts for some 800 deaths and an estimated 165,000 injuries a year. Automated camera enforcement provides the evidence necessary for prosecution.
The city of Bologna in Italy has tested an automatic enforcement camera-based system (known as STARS) to help detect traffic light offences and issue fines for non-compliance. The images are stored as a source of court evidence and for statistical evaluation.
Following its installation, accidents fell by 21% and injuries by 28% at all equipped crossings. The number of fines initially increased significantly - by 88% over the period between 2008 and 2011 - but subsequently stabilised. In comparison with data from the year before installation to August 2011, there was a total reduction of 40% for accidents and 48% for injuries.
Drivers, who did not know where the STARS system was active showed increased caution at all intersections – extending the beneficial effects of the technology while reducing its installation costs.
Speed enforcement is becoming more sophisticated and driver-friendly. Conventionally the main technique has been the use of single-point “spot” speed cameras, which record the driver exceeding the limit as they pass by. In the UK, speed cameras of this kind have often drawn hostility from motorists who perceive it as an unfair means of raising money from enforcement fines.
Speed over distance (SOD) or average speed enforcement (ASE) are seen as fairer methods.
Average speed enforcement is demonstrating higher levels of compliance than spot-speed in a number of European countries where it has been deployed.
“Soft” speed enforcement aims to influence driver behaviour – it does not impose legal or financial penalties. A European example involves detecting a vehicle as it approaches from a measured point ahead, which allows the time needed to cover the distance to be calculated to determine whether the vehicle is speeding. This can trigger a dynamic message sign to display a warning message. (See Vulnerable Road Users)
Many countries are introducing and enforcing 32km/h speed limits in urban areas – to protect vulnerable road users, such as children. In Chicago, USA, where 800 out of the 3,000 pedestrians hit by vehicles each year, are children, and signage is ignored by 10% of motorists – the system lowers camera speed triggers during enforcement hours More information here: http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/cdot/supp_info/children_s_safetyzoneporgramautomaticspeedenforcement.html)
Beneficial ITS vehicle technologies include:
The basis of all these systems, and the safety benefits that they bring, is the development of on-board sensors linked to the vehicle’s engine management and braking systems. (See Driver Support)
Anti-lock braking systems (ABS) intervene to help stop loss of vehicle traction (skidding – for example, in icy weather or wet conditions). ABS works closely with electronic stability control (ESC), which detects the loss of steering control and applies the brakes individually to the wheels to correct the steering. The US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimate that comprehensive use of the technology could avoid one-third of fatal road traffic accidents.
Crash avoidance systems use autonomous braking, which comes into effect if a driver fails to brake in time. The technology is an advance on the (widely-used) autonomous cruise control, which automatically adjusts a vehicle’s speed to keep it a safe distance behind traffic ahead. Both the US and the EU are moving towards making mandatory, the fitting of frontal collision warning systems. Automotive manufacturers have started to include these systems into their production lines. The EU estimates that these will save 5,000 deaths and 50,000 serious injuries a year.
Automatic parking uses sensors to detect the presence of objects around a vehicle to guide the vehicle safely into a clear space.
Driver drowsiness detection is a response to studies that suggest that up to 20% of road traffic accidents are due to fatigue. It works by monitoring a vehicle’s movements and assessing the likelihood of these being controlled or uncontrolled.
The main ISA options are:
Trials indicate the potential for safety, efficiency and improvements – including 42% reductions in fatal crashes, fuel efficiency gains of 5%, and smoother traffic flows resulting in less congestion (See: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv20/07-0247-W.pdf).
Widespread adoption of ISA could bring the additional benefit of reduced insurance costs. In Europe, ISA systems that meet European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) requirements gain an advantage in relation to the car’s overall ‘Safety Assist’ rating.
Automatic Incident Detection (AID) systems use cameras and traffic monitoring technology to record and analyse traffic data and quickly detect incidents using motorway incident detection systems. A sudden build-up of congestion, for example, can indicate that there is an incident ahead.
Response times to road traffic accidents and medical emergencies are critical, with the ‘golden 15 minutes’ typically cited as the optimum window for early and effective treatment. The key needs are fast response and accurate direction to accident scenes. Automatic traffic signal priority for emergency vehicles is increasingly common.
ITS technologies introduced to speed up the process include automatic crash notification systems, which many automotive manufacturers are building into their vehicles. These work by sensing an impact and sending out an automatic alert via mobile phone networks to a call centre. In Europe, the EU’s eCall (emergency Call) initiative aims to mandate, from 2018, European automotive manufactures to install these systems.
Emergency service providers can make use of real-time dynamic route guidance systems to dispatch and route vehicles around known congestion and roadworks to minimise response and return times. Speeding ambulances, themselves, risk causing, or being involved in, road traffic accidents. The US General Services Administration records over 6,000 ambulance crashes a year. In-vehicle ‘black boxes’ can monitor and record driver behaviour and highlight training needs.
Workzone traffic management schemes can draw on ITS technologies such as Bluetooth detection, which anonymously registers the passing of vehicles carrying Bluetooth devices (See Wireless Telecommunications). This provided the US state of Texas with a cost-effective alternative for monitoring the speed of vehicles over a lengthy section of road reconstruction on the I-35 highway.
There are examples of basic roadworks equipment being equipped with ITS features to provide a safety role. For example:
In rural areas, intersection crashes typically occur less often than in urban ones. They are often more severe because of the higher vehicle speeds and the consequences can be more serious because of longer emergency response times. New intersection decision support systems use traffic sensors and advanced computing to monitor vehicles moving along rural divided highways (dual carriageways). They process the data generated to alert drivers waiting to merge with, or cross, the traffic – when the gaps are too short for them to be able to do so safely.
In Australia, where about 60% of all fatal road crashes occur on rural roads, there is research evidence that electronic stability control (ESC) can help avoid crashes on high-speed routes, by detecting when a vehicle is at risk of skidding and applying preventive braking interventions to individual wheels. In 12 modelled crash scenarios developed from data on actual crashes, ESC prevented collisions in 10 cases and reduced their severity in the other two.
Collisions with wild animals on rural roads are increasing wherever human development spreads. This is an issue of growing relevance to developing and emerging economies. A crash involving a large animal can cause death, serious injury, severe vehicle damage and disruption to other road users. Physical defences such as fencing and over/underpasses are not always possible or cost-effective, given access and maintenance issues. In-vehicle and roadside systems are being developed to detect large animals. The sensors can distinguish between moving vehicles (with warm engines) and animals, alerting drivers to their presence (See Information and Warning).
Planners are increasingly concerned with climate change and ‘greenhouse’ gas emissions. Transport is a major source of pollution which has health and quality of life implications. ITS can help ameliorate – for example, by smoothing traffic flows, reducing energy consumption and vehicle emissions. Performance measures for assessing the impact of ITS include reductions in emission levels (Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxides and Hydrocarbons) and better fuel economy.
In most situations, local analysis and simulation are needed to estimate the environmental benefits of a specific ITS project (See Project Appraisal).
It is difficult to measure environmental impacts on an entire region because of the large number of other variables including local terrain, road geometry, weather and contributions from non-mobile sources. For example:
The potential application of ITS to address environmental and societal challenges is an increasingly important emerging area. The main challenges being addressed are:
The enforcement of vehicle emissions legislation – such as the Euro standards introduced in Europe in 1993 and subsequently adopted in other parts of the world – encourages the use of cleaner road vehicles. It does so by putting pressure on operators to accelerate vehicle replacement or to fit their existing vehicles with pollution reducing equipment. In Berlin, the share of compliant diesel-engine vehicles rose by 38% between 2006 and 2011 – largely because fleet operators installed diesel particle filters.
The cost of setting up the London (UK) LEZ was comparatively low because it made large-scale use of the city’s existing congestion charging infrastructure. Creating an LEZ using existing enforcement infrastructure – as in the London case – makes economic sense.
Analysis of Australia’s Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) has identified reductions of 15% in CO2, 13% in NOx and 15% in PM10 emissions from vehicles – as a result of reductions in travel times of 28% and traffic stops of 25%. Case Study: Sydney’s Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System
CO2 and noise emissions often respond to similar solutions:
Demonstrations in the West Midlands of England have shown that the use of night-time variable speed limits (VSLs) on sections of managed motorways near to residential areas can deliver worthwhile noise reductions without affecting journey times as much as in daytime.
There are ways to mitigate the visual impact of ITS equipment. For example:
In time, it is possible (with good design and appropriate technology) that cooperative vehicle systems may reduce the need for invasive ITS installations on roads – since they will automatically collect, process and transfer data and traffic information between vehicles, the roadside and drivers.
When people and businesses relocate the more well-informed they are about transport options, the more likely they are to opt for well-connected locations. In North America, Australia and New Zealand, neighbourhood rating systems and journey planning which makes use of data from public transport operators, cyclists and pedestrians to highlight areas with good facilities.
ITS can also be used to manage and monitor environmental zones. For example, DMS and VMS can be used for signing the zone, especially if different access regimes apply to drivers at different times. ITS can also be used in air quality monitoring and in communicating the results to stakeholders. Example of these are:
Santander, in Northern Spain, has a population of 180,000. It is deploying some 12,000 electronic sensors or ‘nodes’, fixed to buses and buildings, to measure a variety of parameters, such as noise, temperature, ambient light levels, carbon monoxide concentration, and the availability and location of parking spaces, for efficient city management:
Santander’s innovative approach has contributed to a decision by Spanish multinational transportation infrastructure investor, Ferrovial, to invest in the city and develop a Research Centre for Intelligent Cities – in parallel with the company’s cooperation agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
ITS has been used as part of a coordinated approach to promote travel choices that will help reduce congestion and pollution in cities. It provides:
Car pooling (also known as ride-sharing) and car clubs are enjoying a boom, thanks to ITS technologies. ITS applications such as a car pool database (of drivers offering spare seats and potential passengers looking for a ride) – together with a user forum – can enable planned sharing of car journeys. Car pooling reduces individuals’ fuel, parking and toll costs – and in the USA, allows them use of dedicated high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. It helps to reduce traffic demand, cut emissions and relieve the pressure on parking. Employers can offer and promote schemes as an incentive to their workforces.
Car clubs provide members with the use of a car on an as-needed basis for specific journeys – delivering them savings on insurance, depreciation and road taxes. Local governments around the world are promoting schemes on their travel websites as making useful contributions to modal shift. Booking is by phone or internet. For some schemes, a member’s smartcard opens the vehicle and is used to process payment for use and fuel from the member’s account. Transport for London calculates that those driving fewer than 9,600km a year can save up to £3,500 as compared with owning a car.
Cycling is gaining popularity worldwide as an alternative travel mode, one that is attractive on personal and public health grounds. On busy urban roads, cyclists are vulnerable – particularly prone to collisions with heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) overtaking or making turning movements at road junctions. ITS-enabled protective systems being investigated include:
Various organisations engage in road network management. They include the town, city and regional authorities for road networks at every level. There are control centres dedicated to managing the traffic control systems for urban networks, motorways and other strategic roads, as well as for toll roads, tunnels and bridges. Each organisation will have a different perspective on the significance of ITS applications and services but most stand to gain some improvement in network efficiency, for example:
In these ways, the community’s requirements for mobility and commerce can be met more effectively and the need to construct new or expanded roadway facilities can be reduced:
The benefits of ITS for road network management can be considered under a number of headings:
Urban traffic Control (UTS – also known as Area Traffic Control) is one of the world’s longest-established ITS applications, with its origins in the 1970s in response to growing car ownership that led to congestion on city streets. UTC provides the means to monitor road traffic flows in built-up areas, and modify these in response to congestion and other conflicts (for example, the balance between public transport and private cars). One way is by automatically adjusting traffic signal phases at intersections in response to flows and the needs of public transport vehicles (See Urban Traffic Control).
Widely used UTC systems around the world include:
UTC installations form the core of more developed and sophisticated arrays of urban ITS applications that expand their functions by linking in additional capabilities. They do this by introducing common databases and data dictionary, allowing the mechanisms (such as cameras and sensors) used for traffic management, parking management, traffic signal control for priority for buses, air quality management in response to pollution, and weather monitoring to communicate and share information with each other via a single, integrated control centre (See Urban Networks).
Major benefits include:
Central to integrated operations is the adoption of agreed open standards and specifications for products across the ITS industry, to ensure their interoperability. Open specifications make it possible easily to add fresh functions when needed, and free local governments from dependence on individual suppliers when it comes to needing replacement parts or system upgrades. Agencies can then shop around for the most competitive prices and service offers, which in turn stimulates innovative commercial development (See ITS Standards).
Smart parking deployments give car park operators and city governments useful data on levels of demand. They can use this information to adjust charges, levying higher rates to increase turnover on their busiest sites, and lower ones to attract drivers to underused spaces.
A San Francisco system gives drivers real-time information on the occupancy and cost of over 19,000 city-owned parking spots. Drivers can use information on the parking charge, location and time to make their choice. Smartphone apps can help them find a space within an easy walk of their destination. A number of automotive manufacturers are also developing their own in-vehicle parking information systems.
US researcher Professor Donald Shoup has calculated that search for kerb parking in a 15-block city district can created about 1.52 million excess vehicle km of travel. This translates to 177,600 litres (47,000 US gallons) of wasted fuel and 73 tonnes of excess CO2.
Figure 1- Ramp Metering (courtesy of Highways England)
Highway management systems include automatic incident detection, CCTV for the benefit of control centre operators, automation of traffic flow monitoring and software to control speed limits before queues occur. Case studies have shown the delay-savings benefits achievable from the strategic use of variable message signs (VMS) give a positive cost-benefit which justifies the initial capital investment. For example, queue protection systems deliver significant socio-economic benefits from reducing numbers of killed and seriously injured road-users. They also produced significant secondary benefits through incident-delay savings (See Highway Traffic).
Savings from cost reductions in journey times are important to all road users, but the benefits are most relevant to the operators of vehicle fleets and highway infrastructures. The quantifiable benefits come in one of two ways:
In the USA highway management techniques commonly include high occupancy vehicle (HOV) and high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on motorways and expressways.
HOV lanes, introduced in the US in the 1970s and later adopted in Australia and New Zealand – though rare in Europe - are open to cars carrying at least two passengers (for example, in car sharing schemes), and buses and, sometimes, green (low emission) vehicles. The aim is to increase higher average vehicle occupancy and person throughput with the goal of reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. Some HOV lanes are reversible, to accommodate differing peak flows.
HOT lanes give drivers of single-occupancy vehicles access to HOV lanes on payment of a charge levied by, for example, by automatic number plate recognition, or electronic fee collection (EFC). Tolls can increase in line with traffic density as this increases within the lanes, to reduce the risk of their becoming congested.
In the Los Angeles HOT system, drivers use specially-developed "switchable" transponders to indicate the number of occupants. The EFC reader that picks up the setting uses it to decide automatically on chargeability. For enforcement, a beacon near the EFC reader lights up in response to the scanning and alerts highway patrol officers to check the stated occupancy setting.
So-called “Smart” or managed motorway sections use ITS technologies for active traffic management to control flow and speeds and give users relevant information on overhead variable message signs (VMS), to help them make the best use of heavily congested segments. They can impose variable speed limits (VSLs) where the speed limit is altered to reflect current traffic conditions.
Traffic sensors detect slow-moving and stationary traffic and alert HA regional control centres to the changing conditions. These set relevant VMS messages and variable speed limit signs (VSL) to correspond with traffic movements. The “Dynamic Roadspace Utilization Manager (DRUM) is another good example of ITS software application that has been applied to great advantage during contruction works on an active motorway. The principle is based on first cone-on and last cone-off approach to road work closures.
See: http://trl.co.uk/software/software_products/drum.htm
Initial versions enabled the temporary use of the hard shoulder as an extra lane (“hard shoulder running”) when traffic built up, with Variable Speed Limits (VSLs) in force and VMS advising drivers accordingly. Emergency refuges were available at regular intervals.
The more recent design aims to deliver the same benefits for a lower whole life cost. The hard shoulder is available for use as a running traffic lane at all times, so permanently delivering extra capacity. On the London Orbital M25, enforced VSLs and a reduction in lane switching has successfully improved the capacity of the motorway without needing to increase the number of traffic lanes. Other countries are now adopting the idea.
Case Study (See Active Traffic Management)
Freight consolidation centres (FCCs), located at points close to town centres or shopping malls and major road junctions, help to avoid or reduce the impact of Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) on urban roads. They can help mitigate traffic congestion and may have a positive impact on local air pollution. Using logistics tracking and tracing systems, they take in large incoming consignments destined for numbers of in-town retailers, for breaking up into individual loads. These then travel on by smaller and less polluting vehicles at convenient times over the final leg. There are currently over 114 FCCs worldwide, mostly in the EU – specifically France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.
A system deployed in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe rewards truck drivers whose driving is environmentally-friendly with green lights at intersections. It interfaces with the city’s signal control network and incorporates data on cities’ speed limits, encouraging compliance with these by integrating with trucks’ own engine management system for speed limiting and acceleration monitoring. A dashboard display keeps drivers informed on their performance and fuel consumption and driving performance, with low scores generating warnings.
Commercial drivers and their vehicles can be a reliable source of information on current traffic conditions the network. Increasing use of just-in-time deliveries means that vehicle fleet operations managers and drivers are increasingly interested in the real-time status of urban road networks.
The Bristol Freight Consolidation Scheme in the UK delivers to 115 businesses. It has reduced deliveries by 80% and achieved a 130 tonne reduction in CO2 emissions by use of two nine-tonne electric trucks which recharge at the centre at night. These return with recyclable waste. The reduced traffic congestion is predicted to deliver social benefit gains worth up to £2 million over five years.
(See Case Study: Broadmead Freight Consolidation Centre (UK))
Overweight and over-height vehicles pose real threats to road safety and transport infrastructure. Systematic enforcement against overloading of trucks is a cost-effective way of reducing damage to the road pavement. Weigh-in-motion systems save trucks time by checking their safety status as they drive over measurement plates at highway speeds. In the US, a developed version also checks trucking company and driver credentials by automatically accessing electronic data banks, enabling officials to focus on trucks that are likely to be suspect and achieve higher success rates. The US DOT estimates that manual checks can save around 0.7% of road traffic accidents involving trucks (approximately 440,000 each year). Automated screening can improve this to above 3.5% (See Weight Screening).
Concern for the impact on Australia’s road infrastructure (notably bridges) of increasingly heavy trucks has led to the regulatory Intelligent Access Programme (IAP) which restricts use by heavy trucks of the country’s road network.
It allows over-dimension vehicles access to normally restricted routes, in return for their carrying an on-board device that uses satellite-based tracking technology to monitor their compliance with IAP conditions and sends their locations to a control centre for analysis.
IAP enables qualifying road freight transport to increase its productivity by taking faster and more convenient routes, while controlling overall truck impacts on the road network and deterring non-qualifying vehicles.
Successful management of a major event requires close coordination between all parties: the event promoters, the authorities for roads and highways that are affected, the police, emergency services and transport operators. There may be heavy reliance on ITS – for example VMS to keep travellers informed about current options and CCTV to assist the network controllers in their tasks. At the same time, costs of additional equipment that may be needed for only a short period for non-recurrent events demand careful scrutiny (See Planned Events).
When the German Federal Agricultural Show organisers chose the medium-sized city of Koblenz as the location for 2011 the city had to plan for an additional 40,000 visitors a day over a six-month period. The city needed to expand it traveller information service and make it available on a regional basis.
The solution adopted, in coordination with the regional government, was to extend an existing regional, motorway-based intermodal traffic information system and expand the scope of its mobility web portal to cover urban as well as motorway traffic (See www.verkehr.rlp).
The city also needed to generate information for displays on VMS. The city could not afford to buy all the new traffic cameras that it would have needed, so it contracted a traffic information supplier to provide floating vehicle data (FVD)-based output to measure travel times and speeds. FVD involves anonymously monitoring moving vehicles that are equipped with, for example, Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, turning them into mobile traffic sensors for notifying traffic conditions.
The project has raised interest in other German cities which have adopted elements of the approach. It has demonstrated the value to local governments of buying dynamic data from private traffic content providers. Bought-in traffic data proved to be a cost effective alternative to additional conventional traffic cameras.
At the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games the successful operation depended heavily on effective traffic management on the critical Olympic Road Network (ORN) with traffic lanes reserved to give priority access to the 80,000-strong Olympic ‘family’ (so-called ‘games lanes’).
To monitor the network, Transport for London (TfL), the UK capital’s multimodal transportation agency, upgraded 1300 traffic signals and deployed 1400 CCTV cameras, some newly installed, others operating through data sharing arrangements with individual local authorities.
Case Study on Mobility Management for Major International Events
Over and above its main aim of safety, V2I can help to reduce the delays and congestion resulting from road traffic accidents. V2I keeps vehicles in electronic contact with the roadside infrastructure, not only to help avoid crashes but also decrease the environmental impacts of traffic by smoothing traffic flow and minimising rapid accelerations and decelerations. One specific benefit being piloted is the ability to transmit traffic signal phase and timing information directly into the vehicle at upcoming intersections.
The eCall system is an example of connected vehicle technology. A broken-down vehicle – or a vehicle involved in a collision – if vehicle fitted with eCall can send an automatic message about its location, description and the vehicle condition as the event occurs. This can aid prompt detection and rapid clearing of the affected road section to make the area safe for other traffic. The overall benefit is more efficient network operations. The automotive industry is now developing a range of services to lower the cost of dedicated unit installed for the purpose of archieving eCall.
With V2V, vehicles ‘sense’ potential dangers by means of detectors that determine the presence of other vehicles, their positions and speeds. The on-board systems will then warn drivers and/or intervene automatically in engine management or braking systems, to avoid an accident.
Eventually, the hope is that V2V and V2I will reduce both the quantity and size of roadside infrastructure, by sending important safety- and mobility-related information directly into vehicles (See Warning & Control System).
Road users and transport operators want roads that are well-maintained and in good condition and – if at all possible – available for travelling on in all weathers. In this respect the resilience of the road infrastructure itself is an issue. Bridges and safety barriers are vulnerable to vehicle collisions and the road pavement itself may suffer damage from adverse weather, landslides, overloaded vehicles and constant wear and tear. Special measures may have to be put in place to deal with network security to ensure operational resilience (See Network Security).
For monitoring individual ITS installations in operation, the concept of an ‘online filing cabinet’ for storing information can help road maintenance engineers progressively improve overall performance rather than simply reacting to faults being notified. There is even the prospect of locating wireless sensors into road surfaces, to gather and relay information on condition and maintenance needs.
The European Space Agency (ESA)’s “Live Land” project is investigating ways of reducing the exposure of the transport infrastructure to landslides and subsidence by developing a sustainable prediction, monitoring and alerting service. This would use earth observation and satellite communications to create a central management system.
In the USA freight carriers move an estimated 700,000 shipments of hazardous materials every day. Electronic access to carriers’ databases for early identification of the vehicle and cargo enables responders to:
In humanitarian relief supply chains, ITS plays a key role in the last 1km-2km delivery from a local distribution centre (LDC) to affected populations. Computerised management of available vehicles and planning of delivery schedules can optimise resource allocation and routing decisions with the aim of minimising transportation costs and maximising benefits for those in need. This can be particularly important for disasters in developing countries with inadequate road networks.
Existing traffic management systems can play vital supporting roles. Bluetooth-based traffic monitoring proved effective when a factory in Texas caught fire and later exploded. Residents needed immediate evacuation, with school buses and ambulances coming in to rescue them and needing priority access.
Japan has reacted to a series of natural disasters by developing a unified approach to the organisation of traffic management and emergency response, integrating automotive manufacturers’ and other sources of navigation and traffic information in a central disaster transport platform. One output is the creation of event- and location-specific online accessible route maps for use by trucks delivering relief and reconstruction supplies.
Particularly vulnerable are large numbers of passengers moving through confined spaces, for example, transport termini and interchanges – and metro stations. Passenger evacuation systems depend for their effectiveness on the amount and quality of information made available. Simulations can model individual passenger movements to provide for the needs of the elderly and disabled, and integrate planned lifts and escalators for the capacity calculations needed to estimate realistic evacuation times.
Prevention of terrorist acts can be strengthened by systems for the early detection of would-be perpetrators. Analysis of CCTV footage of rail and bus stations can detect people making unusual movements.
The US’ ‘Protect’ programme has developed a detection and alerting system for ensuring that a public transport operator knows within five minutes that there has been a biological or chemical attack, its location and the substances that have been used – five minutes being the limit for minimising numbers of casualties.
The Canadian city of Edmonton has successfully demonstrated a system for detecting explosive and radiological threats to public transport users by equipping ticket validating equipment to pick up traces from the hands of ticket carriers. On gaining a result, it automatically alerts the control centre and photographs the suspect. The system has worked flawlessly.
It is clear from media coverage that the changes that ITS interventions are intended to achieve are not necessarily apparent to, or welcomed by, all transport users. This means that agencies planning to introduce potentially controversial ITS technologies need to be well-prepared with convincing, evidence based arguments to communicate their aims. Examples are shown below.
|
ITS Intervention |
Policy Aim |
Public Perception |
|
Urban Road User Charging
(on existing routes using electronic fee collection technology) |
manage traffic demand and reduce congestion, time delays and pollution invest net revenues in better public transport to influence modal shift |
Public objections to being charged to use roads that the public has already paid for from its taxes |
|
|
|
Results: Urban congestion charging often scores badly in public opinion and referenda Public opposition is a deterrent to elected local politicians, who need voter support |
|
Success Story - London Congestion Charging: was politically achievable because it relied on a quickly-installed enforcement method - automatic, on-street numberplate recognition cameras to record vehicles whose owners were not recorded in the back-office database as having paid the charge. it was up and running, with its benefits becoming apparent, within a single four-year term of an elected mayor |
|
Success Story – Stockholm Congestion Charging: was politically achievable because it was implemented after a comprehensive public consultation its net revenues are used to part finance other infrastructure investments it was subject to a referendum held after its introduction |
|
ITS Intervention |
Policy Aim |
Public Perception |
|
Camera Enforcement: Red Light Running Speed Enforcement |
reduce the severity of accidents and save lives |
invasion of an individual’s privacy penalty fines viewed as hidden local government “taxation” red light camera enforcement has come under strong challenge in the US. |
|
ITS Intervention |
Policy Aim |
Public Perception |
|
Adaptive In-vehicle Speed Control technologies |
reduce the severity of accidents and save lives reduce the costs associated with accidents smooth traffic flows |
driver perception of loss of individual control |
The benefits of ITS are varied and not always directly calculable. For example, real time information systems on public transport are often introduced at the same time as bus priority measures which make the service faster and more reliable, and very often with new or refurbished vehicles:
The benefits of ITS can be assessed in three ways:
Preventing or reducing the severity of an incident saves emergency service costs, hospital and medical costs and losses to the economy thorough lost productivity. Often these are combined and quantified for Killed and Serious Injury (KSI) incidents and where possible need to be quantified for the country, location or highway being considered for the application of ITS.
Speeding up traffic in urban area by means of “smart” computer-controlled traffic signals or smoothing traffic on motorways to eliminate stop-start conditions will bring travel-time savings.
ITS can provide cash benefits in a number of ways – for example, by reducing the initial capital investment in road infrastructure, or by offsetting operational costs to achieve revenue savings. These are often termed as “real” money savings as opposed to socio-economic benefits:
Measuring customer satisfaction can be accomplished by asking whether the ITS product or service is delivering sufficient value or user benefit to outweigh the cost or investment in the product. This is often done through surveys.
ITS is expected to address the needs of not only the travellers but also transport operators, providers and managers. In most cases it may not be possible to assign a quantified benefit. Where results have been quantified – as illustrated in the table below – they can be a useful factor in supporting the business case.
Examples of ITS Benefits
There are many examples where the benefits of ITS have been measured. It is useful to consider both the aggregate and disaggregate benefits - that is to consider the impact the ITS investment will have overall, but also consider where the benefits will fall. Some benefits are in specific goal areas, such as safety. Others will be for specific groups of people, such as the rising population of mobile elderly and disabled people.
As part of its outreach, IBEC arranges sessions, seminars and workshops at World, European, Asia/Pacific and Pan-American ITS congresses and fora. IBEC sponsors sessions on this topic at the annual ITS World Congress.
IBEC also runs internal seminars and in-house training for organisations including the World Bank and the World Road Association (PIARC) and offers training materials in English and Spanish.
Membership of IBEC is open, with the aim of bringing together, and meeting the needs of, not only ITS professionals, but also transport planners, researchers, manufacturers and suppliers of ITS systems, decision-makers in public- and private-sector client organisations, as well as the transport-using public. This last is a very important audience, whose needs for ITS information are not always well catered for.
Members have access to a website library and information services. (See IBEC)