The right data will ease traffic chaos

FEW technologies can claim to reduce congestion and contribute to national prosperity, save government and councils money and at the same time make roads safer and reduce the frustration of motorists. Traffic information is one that can.

Archive traffic data allows road planners to design safer roads and prioritise their investments. With the average cost of a mile of UK motorway now being around £23 million tough decisions about how to target limited public funds have to be made.

Accurate, quality data is the key to making those decisions objectively and ensuring they are driven by the evidence and not political whim. Having decided which schemes should go ahead, traffic modelling, underpinned by accurate data, is the key to making good design decisions that will maximise the flow of traffic and minimise the likelihood of crashes.

Valuable

While archive data is valuable, the value of real-time traffic data in the future may be greater still. Real-time data in the hands of the Highways Agency, local highway authorities and the police will allow resources to be targeted to where they can do most good.

Whether that is to identify problems on the highway and quickly direct Highways Agency traffic officers to the area or to take steps to move traffic onto alternate routes, the potential to save lives and to keep traffic moving is obvious.

That, however, is not the limit of the value of real time traffic information. The Government has recognised that active traffic management and hard shoulder running will get far more out of the network than currently. But how is it decided that the build up of traffic justifies opening the hard shoulder for moving vehicles? To do that accurate real time traffic information is needed.

And of course, there is value in providing traffic information direct to drivers. A driver who is relaxed is a safe driver, and a driver who knows they are on the fastest route to their destination currently available is likely to be more relaxed than one who is wondering what is around the corner.

A driver, therefore, who is getting good information delivered into their vehicle, in a format they can absorb easily and act upon, will be safer than one who is not.

Disseminated

How then should that data be collected and disseminated? We can build a road network complete with CCTV, fixed sensors and other hardware and it will, if our investment is big enough, provide the data we seek. We can use data delivered by GPS sensors in vehicles and if we have equipped enough vehicles then we will get data of sufficient quality to meet our needs. We can now also collect data from cellular networks and use it to show how traffic is flowing and given the huge number of mobile phones now in use this technology presents a massive opportunity.

And having collected it, via these various technologies, we must deliver it. We can archive it and use it in models or we can transmit it via radio, mobile phone or satellite navigation with traffic systems direct to the driver.

Technologies

In the case of one company, ITIS Holdings, these various technologies have been merged into the concept they call TrafficScience – a package of tools for collecting and then disseminating traffic information. Uniquely, its ability to use data from cell phones allows it to collect data in real-time at extraordinary levels of granularity. Other companies have their own offerings and no doubt will highlight, as they see it, the benefits of those systems.

Imagine though, the advantages of being able to build active traffic management systems without spending huge sums of money on fixed sensors.

Imagine the potential of empowering the police to redirect traffic off a route that is becoming overloaded or has been blocked by an incident without the need to first invest in CCTV and fixed sensors at a cost of tens of millions of pounds for every stretch of road.

Imagine the savings to the economy if drivers could be given the information they need to avoid traffic jams far enough in advance to alter their route and avoid it.

Safer roads, freer flowing roads and better investment decisions – all at a fraction of the cost that providing such benefits cost today. That is what quality traffic information offers.

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