Thinking Highways - Europe and Rest of The World Edition - June/July 2014

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thinkinghighways.com
Volume 9 Number 2 June/July 2014
A SHIFT IN EMPHASIS
Six experts discuss the
changing role of the traffic
control centre
Finnish on a high
Small nation,
big ideas
The approach that makes the
ITS Europe Congress host
country so unique
Maltas impressive ITS
implementation plans
EUROPE AND REST
OF THE WORLD
EDITION
INTELLIGENT TRANSPORT SYSTEMS AND ADVANCED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
TCC Documentary Podcast
available NOW!
PLUS: Listen to our ASECAP 2014 podcasts
Podcast LISTEN NOW AT
http://thinkinghighways.com/
category/podcasts/
TECHNOLOGY
The importance of the
perfectly executed Russian
toll road, p18
INNOVATION
Geoff Collins goes hehind the
scenes of a particularly English
traffic project, p14
SPECIFICATIONS
Open source and open data for
the Norwegian Public Roads
Administration, p22
SMART MOBILITY
FITSRUS: the Helsinki to
St Petersburg Smart Transport
Corridor, p26
0_TH214_EU_COVER.indd 1 04/06/2014 14:55
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Europe/Rest of the World Vol 9 No 2 thinkinghighways.com 1
THE VIEW Foreword Thinking
A welcome addition to the Thinking
Highways editorial team...
Kevin Borras
I
ts 1989 (dont worry, it isnt 1989 but
I am asking you to imagine that it
is). I am at my desk on the frst foor
of Janes Information Group and I am
proofreading a section of Janes Nuclear,
Biological and Chemical Warfare Yearbook.
My colleague Joan wanders over with a
smartly dressed young chap in tow. He is
about 19 or 20. I am slightly older, 21.
Kevin, she said, this is Jason
Barnes, hes joining us in a couple
of weeks to work on my Defence
Appointments & Procurement
Handbook. Jason, this is Kevin.
Hi, says new Jason, sheepishly
holding out his hand for me to shake.
I duly shake it. Pleased to meet
you, he says ...but dont slouch.
Pardon? I enquire.
Dont slouch.
Do I slouch?
Aye, you do a bit.
Oh, I hadnt noticed.
Well, you know now, says Jason, a
veritable coiled spring of youthful brio
and faintly alarming self-confdence
who was wearing the shiniest shoes
I had ever seen. See you.
And of he strode, purposefully down
the corridor, leaving most of the editorial
department somewhat taken aback.
Tats nice for you, Kevin, said
one colleague, laughing. Youll have
someone of your own age to play with.
Did you notice his shoes? asked
another. And you could cut yourself on
the crease of his trousers. Smart boy.
Little did we know that a quarter of a
century later we would be announcing our
reunifcation to an equally unsuspecting
world (although anyone who read my
last foreword might have been inclined
to hazard a reasonably accurate guess
as to who the mysterious Mr X was).
Tose intervening 25 years have seen
Anyone who
read my last
foreword
might have
been inclined
to hazard a
reasonably
accurate
guess as
to who the
mysterious
Mr X might
have been
Listen now to
the Thinking
Aloud
podcasts at
thinkinghighways.
com/category/
podcasts
Join the
Thinking
Highways
LinkedIn group
at
linkedin.com
our pairing at Janes last for another
three before a very doleful-looking Jason
emerged from a meeting to announce that
hed been made redundant and then seven
years later when I took over the editorship
of another title within the ITS sector and
was granted the luxury of a deputy editor,
he was the frst person I called. We made
a good team, largely because we were very
diferent characters, approached everything
(work, life in general) from diferent angles
and yet appreciated those diferences.
And then on returning from the 2001
ITS World Congress in Sydney I discovered
that he had been ofered the editors hot
seat of another title within the company in
my absence and that was, seemingly, that.
Four years later, while on holiday
in Cornwall, Jason calls me and asks
what I would think if he accepted an
ofer to become the editor of another
magazine with the ITS sector. I can tell
he really wants to take it and I wish him
all the best, putting us pretty much in
direct competition with each other, a
competition that only intensifes upon
the formation and launch of H3B Media
a case of out of the frying pan and into
the fre and a really ferce one at that.
REJOINING FORCES
Nine years later and its unquestionable that
Jason is one of the, if not the, most respected
journalists in the ITS and advanced trafc
management sphere. When we knew
that he had become available at exactly
the time that we were going public with
our plans for THx, a new magazine for
PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets it
was almost inevitable that our career
paths would dovetail for a third time.
I see the dream team is back together,
said a delegate at a conference I attended
recently. Butch and Sundance reunited!
I am not sure which one of them is meant
to be me... but one things for sure, I am
paying more attention to my posture. And
Ive bought some heavy duty shoe polish.
Kevin Borras is editor of Thinking Highways and
publishing director/co-founder of H3B Media.
kevin@h3bm.com; thinkinghighways.com
Editor in Chief
Kevin Borras (kevin@h3bm.com)
+44 (0)20 3463 9482
Art Editor
Barbara Stanley (barbara@h3bm.com)
Associate Editor, Thinking Highways/Editor, THx
Jason Barnes (jason@h3bm.com)
+44 (0)20 3463 9481
Contributing Editors
Richard Bishop, Paul Hutton, Andrew Pickford,
Paul Vorster
Contributors to this issue
Evgeny Atlaskin, Matti Autioniemi, Peter Paul
Barbara, Csar Bartolom, Richard Bishop, Johan
Casselgren, Phil Charles, Geoff Collins, Kallistratos
Dionelis, Greg Drach, Semyon Fokin, Marjo Hippi,
Paul Hutton, Heikki Konttaniemi, Andreas Kossak,
Risto Kulmala, Matti Lankinen, Kari Menp, Crispin
Moller, Julia Nelepa, Pertti Nurmi, Emrihan Ozdemir,
Jos Pap, Dmitriy Plotnikov, Elias Pyry, Karri
Rantasila, Eemil Rauma, Eirik Skjetne, Alan Stevens,
Timo Sukuvaara, Andr Vits, Hans Westerheim,
Riika Ylitalo
News and Web Editor
Gareth Hayward (gareth@h3bm.com)
Sales and Marketing
Luis Hill (luis@h3bm.com)
+44 (0)20 3463 9485
Duncan Ingram (duncan@h3bm.com)
+44 (0)1258 268561
Julia Nelepa (julia@h3bm.com)
+46 733 100 640
Subscriptions and Circulation
Kerry Hill (kerry@h3bm.com)
Accounts/Office Manager
Kerry Hill +44 (0)20 3463 9486
Group Publishing Director Kevin Borras
Group CEO Luis Hill
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thinkinghighways.com 2 Vol 9 No 2 Europe/Rest of the World
CONTENTS Volume 9 Number 2
TECHNOLOGY FEATURES
COLUMNS & SERVICES
4
COVER FEATURE
Paul Hutton investigates the
changing face of the traffic
control centre
14
ENFORCEMENT
How a permanent average speed
installation is saving lives
1
FOREWORD
The dream team is back
together. Again.
60
ANDR VITS
62
PROF PHIL CHARLES
63
ASECAP: KALLISTRATOS
DIONELIS
16
TOLLING
A potted history of tolling in
Turkey...with a glimpse of the
future
18
TOLLING
The importance of the toll
road to the well-being of a
developing country
EC PROJECTS & ITS EUROPE FOCUS
44
MALTA
Kevin Borras talks to
Peter Paul Barbara, Maltas
National ITS Coordinator
about his countrys
ambitious schemes
50
ASSET TRACKING
Are Russias roads really
that unsafe? Not any
more, says Semyon Fokin
54
GAMIFICATION
Were all gamers now
but how is it affecting our
travel behaviour?
58
TUNNEL SAFETY
Csar Bartolom on
the role of concrete in
improving fire safety
22
POSSE
Open specifications, open
source and open data for the
Norwegian Public Roads
Administration
26
FINLAND: VTT
FITSRUS is allowing
smoother passenger traffic
across the FinnishRussian
border
30
FINLAND: TRAFFICLAB
A new public and private
sector initiative is creating
new possibilities in road
traffic services
34
FINLAND: FMI
How vehicular networking
and road weather services are
advancing traffic safety
64
IR2B: JOS PAP
65
IBEC: DR ALAN STEVENS
66
RICHARD BISHOP
67
PAUL HUTTON
68
DR ANDREAS KOSSAK
70
THINKING ALOUD
Paul Hutton with the latest
news from the Thinking
Highways podcast
72
AD INDEX
Your guide to finding the
advertisers in this issue
38
FINLAND: ARCTIC POWER
Delivering short-term road
weather information to travellers
in the north of Finland
42
FINLAND: RISTO KULMALA
Improving the duration and
quality of journeys via evaluation
and piloting
category/podcasts
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SWARCO AD new 2014 210x260 lady- Thinking Highways v2 Helsinki.indd 1 23.05.2014 12:41:32
TECHNOLOGY Traffic control rooms
Since Thinking Highways launched in 2006, the role of the
traffic control centre has changed. No more do
operatives simply observe the traffic conditions on a video
wall and act rapidly when incidences on the network
occur. The TCC has undergone something of a
metamorphosis, as Paul Hutton discovers
Changing rooms
I
f youre managing a transport net-
work, the chances are youll have a
control room where at least some
of that management takes place. But for
many in the industry, the control room
is some sort of mythical place that they
rarely see and dont understand.
So we at Thinking Highways thought
wed investigate what actually happens
in a control room in 2014, how responsi-
bilities have changed and what the future
might look like. I spoke to representa-
tives from four leading manufacturers of
control room equipment, plus the heads
of two control rooms, one in Europe and
one in the US.
So lets meet that European control
room manager, first, Esmon George
from the London Streets Traffic Control
Centre, who explains that, despite it
being one of the biggest and busiest cit-
ies in the world, Londons control room is
actually relatively new:
The key thing to recognize is that 10
or so years ago London didnt have a 24/7
control room for the road network. So we
started taking over roles and responsibili-
ties from the police and other agencies
to get involved in both coordinating the
impact of planed events and roadworks
but also to get a much better handle on
traffic management issues, intelligence
gathering, situational awareness and
so on. I think that collective increase in
capability from a standing start has been
something of a gestational development
over the last decade.
Jason Sims runs the Kansas City
SCOUT traveller information system
in the US, which is unique in that its
the only municipal traffic management
organisation that spans two states, Kansas
and Missouri (not very much of Kansas
City actually lies in the State of Kansas).
I asked him what his controllers do, and
what they are tasked with achieving:
They are responsible for taking calls
from all Kansas and Missouri part-
ners, which can include the media, law
enforcement, fire service, citizenswe
do have a complete customer service
operation inside the traffic management
centre and we disseminate information
out so anything that has to do with traf-
fic, anything that blocks a lane, anyone
that would need roadside assistance, any
maintenance activity for both States, they
are populating our traveler information
system and they are putting out traveler
information on various platforms.
To run a control room, you need
equipment to allow you to monitor the
traffic situation through CCTV and sen-
sors, plus computers to allow controllers
to do their jobs. Jupiter Systems is one of
available NOW!
category/podcasts/
thinkinghighways.com 5 Europe/Rest of the World Vol 9 No 2
Traffic control rooms
the companies that has been providing
solutions for control rooms that allows
organisations to gather visual informa-
tion and display them on video walls and
now mobile phones, tablets and laptops
as well.
Brady Bruce is Vice President for mar-
keting and strategic alliances at Jupiter,
and he says that when it comes to control
rooms, its all about the bigger picture:
Those systems allow traffic managers
to see camera views of the roadways, to
get volumetric data from in-road sen-
sors and other types of telemetry that are
describing the flow of traffic through a
metropolitan area, a state, a province or
even across the country. What we are
seeing now is the increasing importance
of those centres as multiple agencies are
looking to coordinate their activities. We
are now seeing those very same traffic
control rooms being used to coordinate
the activities of police, fire and emer-
gency management services.
Activu is a software and service com-
pany that makes software enabling
network-based visualisation, allowing
people to interact with equipment and
each other, to make quick time-critical
decisions. Vice President of Product
Management, John Stark, says traffic con-
trol centres have unique requirements:
The role of the control room within
the traffic industry has been more and
more control over changing message
signs, understanding what traffic flows
are like, making sure they can respond
to differing traffic situations and be able
to actually manage those traffic flows
and more importantly inform the public
about what is going on on the roadways.
In an emergency situations they need to
have contingency plans for things like
natural disasters, evacuation plans. If
something happens the city can actu-
ally move large parts of the populace
from one place to another because of an
impending natural activity.
Esmon George explains that some-
thing not altogether dissimilar also hap-
pens in London:
We can control half of Londons traffic
signals from the control room and that is
a lot of capability, coupled with the ability
to see a lot of the road network through
CCTV and having sharing agreements
with local authorities so we can see their
CCTV, we can see the national Highways
Agency CCTV and although thats a lot
of visibility at any one time, with the right
intelligence it does give us the ability to
pinpoint issues very quickly.
Rob Moodey is UK sales account man-
ager for Matrox, a company providing
equipment for control room walls, opera-
tors and the connectivity between them,
including introducing dual-head work-
stations where operators have more than
one screen in front of them. Although he
aggress that the role of a control room is
often misunderstood, he thinks its actu-
ally fairly simple:
I think the clue is in the name! The
people there want to influence whats
going on outside of where they are, in
other words, to be in control. In some
scenarios you cant entirely control the
events that are happening but you can
respond to them and you can try to
channel them, so in that sense the room
is for situational awareness followed by
the control of those resources that you
can control. The traffic control room
was, and in fact still is, the place where
all these information sources are brought
together and where the decisions are
facilitated and I dont think that partic-
ular aspect has changed since the very
beginning.
STARK REMINDER
What has changed, according to John
Stark, is the requirement for controllers
not only to manage the traffic, but also
to inform:
Traditionally there wasnt so much of
a public-facing side to the organization.
The reality was that they were bringing a
lot of information in but not disseminat-
ing it in any way that was actionable to
the outside world. I think today there is
a very public face to all these traffic man-
agement centres half of their purpose is
to provide data to news agencies to allow
people to see what their commutes are
going to be like and what the traffic situ-
ation is going to be like on any given day.
And in Kansas City Jason Sims is
working hard to let the travellers know
as much as they can. It certainly offers its
citizens a wide range of critical traveler
information of a number of platforms.
We are populating several apps and
Statewide maps, we have over 100 mes-
sage signs and within two minutes of
taking a call we try and get information
out to the travelers. That information is
automatically going to websites for both
States, its populating the Kansas City
Scout mobile app, its populating the City
Scout website and we have what we call
Traveler Information Alerts where we
have 7,000 to 10,000 subscribers and they
get real-time information sent directly
their phones or computers.
SHARING THE BURDEN
But its not only control rooms that
now keep drivers informed of traffic
The Great Wall of China: Beijings
cavernous traffic control centre
conditions. Sat Navs, smart phone apps
and private traffic information compa-
nies are gathering and distributing infor-
mation, and social media allows people
to share information with each other. So
could we get to a point where we dont
actually need control rooms to manage
traffic? Es George isnt so sure:
The move towards self-sufficiency is
something we are working on, in chang-
ing the ethos from road users finding out
what the traffic issues are when they get
into their car to doing a bit of research
before they start their journey but what
wouldnt happen without a traffic con-
trol centre is the ability to respond to the
unexpected, so whilst you can have a cer-
tain amount of self-regulation in terms of
decision-making and what journeys they
take and where they make them, what
they wouldnt have is the layer on top of
that which firstly coordinates the activity
and secondly ensure a timely response to
ensure services are back to normal.
And John Stark and Rob Moodey
agree were nowhere near the point where
people can be self-sufficient:
That does not eliminate the emer-
gency situation, says Activus Stark, with
fires or natural disasters, or actions of
one sort or another that require planned
activities to occur or plans to be set in
stone by the agencies that are oversee-
ing those roadways and need to execute
them in coordination with the fire or
police departments who are tasked with
trying to keep the populace safe or move
them in the right direction or not move
if necessary. The control rooms function
on a day to day basis might have slightly
subsided because people now self-serve,
however the role is still critical in places
where the public simply cant do that.
Adds Moody: Decisions that the indi-
vidual travelers make only really relate to
their own behaviour the control room
is trying to get a group response rather
than an individual one. Individuals are
influenced by the suggestions of others,
whether thats traffic announcements
over the radio, satnav rerouting or even
intelligent road signs that are changing as
they are driving. The better this gets, the
more effective those individual decisions
are going to be. What happens behind
those satnav reroutings or dynamic signs
may well be algorithmic but its still going
to emanate from a central traffic man-
agement function.
Brady Bruce confirms that control
rooms come into their own in emergency
situations:
What really become important in
the decision-making process is having
access to the best and most recent infor-
mation and thats the purview of the
technology. Its getting that information
to the people that are going to have to
make those critical decisions about how
to reroute traffic.
And he adds that information gathered
from sat navs and apps such as Waze just
becomes another source to help us man-
age the roads better:
So here we have drivers running an
application on their smartphone thats
providing information to them from
other drivers on the road but remember
that as a use of Waze I am allowing myself
to be tracked. Heres where I am. This is
how fast Im moving. This is how my
speed on this particular stretch of road-
way compares to others. This generates
a tremendous amount of really useful
information that could in fact serve the
people that arent using that application.
Theres an increasing interdependency
on these crowdsourcing systems and the
municipal systems that make both of
them more important not less.
EFFICIENCY DRIVE
Barco delivers video walls, controllers
and video wall management software.
Strategic Marketing Director Guy van
Wijmeersch agrees that people cant
really travel around efficiently without
control rooms:
When we look at real intermodal
transportation where we want to go from
point A to point B, using for example the
bus and then renting a bike and really
using all the possibilities, I think theres
still a long way to go. This is a service that
a traffic control centre could look at, espe-
cially one located in a city where they can
go outside of their own traffic medium.
Bruce maintains that control rooms
are now about much more than just
OUR PANEL
Brady Bruce is Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Alliances at Jupiter Systems; Esmon George, MBE, is Operations Manager at Transport for
London; Rob Moodey is Sales Account Manager at Matrox; Jason Sims is Traffic Center Manager at Kansas City Scout; John Stark is Vice President of
Product Management at Activu; Guy van Wijmeersch is Director of Strategic Marketing at Barco
Theres an increasing interdependency on
these crowdsourcing systems and the municipal
systems that make both of them more
important not less
Answers for infrastructure and cities.
about increased pollution levels and the resulting changes
in traffic control routines. As soon as the NO
level
drops below the threshold again, the red phases at the
gatekeeper traffic signals return to normal. This innovative
control mechanism makes Potsdam one of the pioneers
of environment-sensitive traffic control. For the city,
the new traffic system management center (VSMZ)
with Sitraffic Scala is a key tool for the implementation
of its clean air plan.
Now the traffic control system in Potsdam does not only
take the traffic volume at the traffic signal into account,
but also factors in the current nitrogen dioxide levels.
Whenever the NO
load is too high at any point in the city,

selected gatekeeper traffic signals respond with extended
red phases, slowing down vehicle access to critical
areas. In combination with other environment-sensitive
control measures, this improves overall traffic flow
and air quality. In addition, message signs inform drivers
Germanys first environment-oriented traffic control system meters
vehicle access and creates coordinated green phases
Green light for clean air
siemens.com/mobility
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A19100-V350-F104-X-7600_210x260.indd 1 24.04.14 11:40
managing traffic and that they come into
their own when theres a major incident:
As traffic becomes more and more
complex and as the requirements for gov-
ernments to deliver more and more rapid
service response, the traffic control room
really becomes a centre for the coordina-
tion of an entire citys services or that an
entire province might administer so you
can imagine a case where a large fire has
broken up in a part of town, you have to
get a lot of emergency vehicles on site,
there are inured people so you have to
get ambulances in, you need the police
there to control the crowdsand this can
be happening during the worst possible
moment of the day, which is peak traffic
right at the end of a workday. Being able
to understand where the traffic is, how to
get around it, to reroute the traffic around
affected areas and to get the emergency
vehicles and required personnel in place
as quickly as possible means that there
is more than just a requirement to man-
age the traffic. Coordination and service
delivery is a crucial part of the process.
Incident detection and management
is something that Es George is already
working with in London:
London Streets Traffic Control
Centre is part of a wider surface trans-
port and traffic operations centre which
we call the STTOC and that has three
main elements to it. Theres the police
control room for traffic and transport
policing which works in very close part-
nership with Transport for London,
called Metrocom; theres TfLs control
rooms for London buses which oversees
the operation of the 8000 or so buses
on our road network, Centrecom, and
theres the LSTCC. The three of those
operate the three main arms of what is
actually an eight-sided structure which
is the best way to describe it. On top of
that we have what we call the Strategic
Coordination Team whose role is to
make sure that all the information is
going out to the senior leadership team
within the organization, together with
some external stakeholders.
But he says theres more that could
be done, because for example refuse
collection teams can have an effect on traf-
fic that could be much better managed:
They all have set routes and rather
large trucks so we know theres going to
be a refuse vehicle on a certain part of
the road network at certain times of the
day but I have no visibility of that. That
would be quite a powerful tool to have
an equally I would argue that we dont
know what visibility the refuse collec-
tors have of network conditions. It may
not be economically viable or practical
to have vehicles sitting by the side of the
road waiting for significant traffic issues
to subside, if they are able to do that then
they are not adding to the congestion.
Jason Sims says collaboration has
helped in Kansas City:
Scout is a firm believer that you are
only as strong as your relationships
so we do have Kansas Highway Patrol
located in our centre as well as Kansas
City Police Department. Also we have
CAD Integration where their computer-
aided dispatch is coming directly into our
traveler information system and we have
that established for six other law enforce-
ment agencies. We also have a police and
media hotline that comes directly into
the traffic management centre so the
police departments and media can call in
that number is used very frequently in
the rush hours. The last option we have
is that we have an interface where we
disseminate all of our video to all of our
partners. We have approximately 70 part-
ners and as part of the application they
can type in and communicate directly
with our operators without having to
pick up the phone.
John Stark says that further integration
of different agencies is possible, but do
the various stakeholders have the will to
do it?
There are non-populated but ready-
to-be-enabled emergency operations
centres right here in New Jersey, for
example, that regularly go through coor-
dinated multi-disciplinary activities to
make sure that when something occurs
information and control and the right
chain of commands is in place so every-
one knows who to listen to and who to
look for for information so they can bet-
ter go about their business and serve the
community that they are in. The ques-
tion is more of a legislative one where in
the US, and probably elsewhere, theres
a certain level of distrust in having too
much surveillance being provided to the
governing body.
And Guy van Wijmeersch also believes
that while conceptually its possible, he
isnt quite so sure that its desirable:
Theoretically and technically its
possible, yes. Does it make sense? I am
not so sure. Mainly because keeping an
infrastructure up and running, like an
electricity grid or a highway, is still going
to be an operational task. Will it improve
the efficiency of the highway? Yes, but
there would have to be a different con-
trol room that is focusing on the full cus-
tomer experience.
THE IMPRACTICABILITY
OF DECISION-MAKING
Whats becoming apparent here is that
there are many stakeholders involved in
decisions. Jupiter Systems dont think its
practical to expect to have all the stake-
holders in place at one time when theyre
needed, so have used technology to come
up with an innovative, remote solution:
Over the years I found out that
whenever I would walk into these fan-
tastic control centres and ask a simple
question Is there anyone else who is
not in the room today that needs to
see this information? and almost uni-
versally the answer was yes. It might
Often there is no substitute for people
working together in the same place
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be an important consultant that needs
to see what we are seeing today or the
centres manager is out at a conference
across the other side of the country and
Id like him to be able to see the emerg-
ing situation we are seeing and get their
input. At Jupiter we took all our exper-
tise in gathering information and bring-
ing it back to the control room in high
resolution and allow it to be accessed
through other systems anywhere we
wanted to provide ubiquity. We took all
that information and now allow users
on their smartphones and tablets (both
IoS and Android), as well as their lap-
tops, to see the same thing, to access the
same information that managers back in
the control room are able to access and
be able to interact with each other. In a
control room I can see an emerging situ-
ation and I have a manager who should
be seeing this but hes across the country
somewhere and now I can send him an
invitation to say Paul, I need you take a
look at this I dont know where you are
or what device you have but our Canvas
system does. He will get an invitation
saying Brady wants to share canvas with
you you accept it and you will see a
screen that I have shared with you of one
or more visual images. Now we are seeing
the same thing we can go one step further
and interact. I can circle something with
my mouse and you will be able to see
that same annotation happening in real
time on the screen of your smartphone.
I can say that this is the area we are con-
cerned about, that we have troubles in
this are before and what do you think we
should do? You can say Brady the real
issue is over here in the South East and
you can circle a different area and we can
resolve the problems in real time using
live video.
So if we have the ability to manage
things remotely could we, I ask Guy from
Barco, would it actually reduce the neces-
sity for a control room and let decision-
makers work remotely to carry out the
functions they currently do within the
one location?
Again, technically you can have
these kind of distributed control rooms
but from a social point of view, from a
human point of view, I still think theres
a long way to go before people will really
want to work in that way. A theory like
that needs another 10-15 years before its
going to happen that we have a virtual
control room.
And while Rob Moodey understands
how one or two people can have valuable
input remotely, he doesnt think its prac-
tical for all decisions to be made that way:
You have to agree that telepresence
is getting better all the time but critical
scenarios are not when you want to hear
people asking if anyone else can hear a
buzzing on the audio or if its just them
that cant see the video feed. Those are
things that just dont fit into the crisis way
of thinking.
Similarly, Activus John Stark doesnt
think the managers would want it either:
Although the capability is there and
the tools are certainly there, I think the
management of the infrastructure still
acts in a way that needs people to be con-
centrated in one place so that they can
work together.
And Es George says that although he is
more than able to have his team working
outside of the control room, he wouldnt
like it as the norm:
We have contingency built into what
we do and how we operate so if we had
a significant incident and we need to
decamp somewhere else we can do that
not just through alternative fixed sites but
through the connectivity of our key sys-
tems. There are issues to deal with the
3G or 4G network will be under consid-
erable strain in a situation like that and
you cant necessarily rely on data quality
to give you a real, workable image. More
importantly, while operating remotely is
a viable proposition what you do miss is
the situational awareness and joined-up
activity that your partner area is working
on. Its all solveable, whether its through
video conferencing or real-time touch
pads and so on, but theres no real sub-
stitute for the close proximity of work-
ing. When we moved the three control
rooms into this one building in 2009
we saw some immediate benefits in co-
location, certainly in terms of situational
awareness.
THE STAFF OF LEGEND
Within the control room itself, techno-
logical advances are clearly helping the
staff do their work more efficiently, as
Brady Bruce explains:
One of those is the increased amount
of bandwidth thats available that allows
us to pull more camera feeds and more
data feeds throughout geographically
dispersed areas back to a control room
and to do that in high quality and pro-
vide that information in real time
bandwidth has been a profound influ-
ence on this. The other is the emergence
of IP cameras that allows us to get higher
resolution and higher frame rate visual
images back to the control room AND
do it with less bandwidth than was previ-
ously required.
Guy van Wijmeersch is of the opinion
that technology is just making every-
thing easier:
We have put more sensors out there so
the monitoring of traffic is just done in a
Critical scenarios are not when you want to hear people asking if anyone else can
hear a buzzing on the audio or if its just them that cant see the video feed
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better way. Streams of data can now come
in using video and its much much easier
than it used to be. A lot of the cameras are
IP cameras and are being monitored in
the control room. Secondly there are also
better solutions out there that can help
us to look at the right picture at the right
moment. A lot of decisions are taken
through the IP camera they monitor
themselves so they only show the excep-
tions. Its not about showing image from
a lot of cameras, its about the right ones
at the right time.
Jason Sims says his controllers have an
inordinate amount of information to sift
through, so having technology to alert
them of where to look is vital:
We have over 350 cameras in Kansas
City as well as over 2000 vehicle detec-
tion stations (VDS) and we have smart
VDS that detect drops in speeds and will
alert the operator to look at that loca-
tion. We also have two different types
of technology on our cameras that take
snapshots of anomalies and directly alert
our operators. When the operator has
the traveler information system up they
have the best situational awareness pos-
sible. We have had situations prior to this
where we did not have this. Its harder, as
the system grows, you only have a certain
amount of operators and you must use
technology to give the best situational
awareness possible and get the best infor-
mation in so the operator can get the best
information out.
A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE
So where do we go next? What does the
future look like? John Stark and Brady
Bruce both think that the first key thing
is to better integrate legacy systems:
Most places have a bunch of disparate
systems that arent integrated in any way
and theres no plan to integrate them in
any way as they are either competitors
products or just arent interoperable and
theres incentive to bring those systems
together to provide a unified view of the
information, explains John. This is where
companies like Activu come into play as
we can bring this information together
and allow our customers to effectively
integrate and assimilate it in an attrac-
tive way and then share that assimilated
view with others in their organization.
This layer that sits on top of all these
systems plays a very important role in
control rooms across a variety of vertical
industries and as the network becomes
more and more important companies
like us, and some of our big competitors,
are going to be very well placed to take
advantage of that.
We have more cameras that are posi-
tioned around metropolitan areas, says
Brady, and there are more sensors built
into roadways and other parts of the
city, all of which provides information.
Transparency becomes the watchword.
The goal is to coordinate all the infor-
mation coming in from these disparate
systems, making sense of it and apply-
ing some of the big data technology that
can look at what is basically unstructured
data and connect meaning to it the
meaning is what leads to planning, both
on the part of the transportation manag-
ers and on behalf of the traveler. I think
we get better as cities, states, provinces
and countries by making more informa-
tion available, extracting more meaning
from the information and then simply as
citizens, having access to that informa-
tion so we can plan the services we need
to consume in terms of transportation.
As a controller actually using the sys-
tem, Jason Sims has a wishlist:
Id say tweaking the algorithm, tweak-
ing the technology in order to have
customizable areas so that there are
less false positives. We would love the
vendors to try and continue develop-
ing cameras to increase the ability to do
accurate counts. If you have accurate
counts coming from cameras they can
minimize the need for deploying detec-
tionI just think that its very important
when you are looking at urban areas to
also consider technology for the rural
areas as well. Kansas City Scout manages
over 400 miles of rural Interstate span-
ning two states some of the technology
is applicable for urban areas but not so
applicable for ruralif we could keep a
good focus on the rural areas and proce-
dures for incident management that are
so important, that would really push the
TMC operations all across the country to
another level.
Rob Moodey concludes this article
and accompanying documentary pod-
cast with a cautionary word of warn-
ing regarding the difference between
peak and average performance require-
ments. His concern is that as budgets
are squeezed and technology is more
relied upon, the human influence will
be diminished which will be fine most of
the time, but on rare occasions will cause
enormous problems:
The challenge is the cost of Just In
Case capacity. Do you really need to
invest in something that will only be used
one year out of seven? You might make
that analysis if you are choosing to buy
an extra snow plough but if its capacity
in the control room dealing with all the
information thats going to flow in during
a crisis its too late to not have the capacity
by that point. The only people who wont
feel the pain then are the accountants.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Paul Hutton is Head of H3B Medias
Broadcast Services Division
paul@h3bm.com
For the audio version please visit
category/podcasts/
Thanks to all the contributors who
took part in this article.
Control centre operatives have an inordinate
amount of information to process, so having
technology to alert them where to look is vital
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TECHNOLOGY Speed enforcement
In 2012 Nottinghamshire, UK, installed a SPECS3 average speed camera
system on the A614, monitoring traffic along 21km of single carriageway road.
The solution was chosen because previous installations of SPECS cameras had
consistently delivered improved safety and traffic flows, which were key
objectives for this route. Geoff Collins takes up the story two years on
Untangling Notts
T
he A614 is a former trunk road
linking the city of Nottingham
with the A1. It is maintained to
a high standard and features a wide,
single carriageway with several cen-
tral right turn features into local side
roads. The route has many bends and
hills with no footway for most of its
length and is one of the busiest non-
trunk roads in the county. Before the
SPECS cameras were installed, the A614
had a significant casualty history with
289 people killed or injured in a five-
year period. Nottinghamshire County
Council undertook a programme to
address this unfortunate record with the
support of thethen road safety minister
Mike Penning together with the local MP
and senior county councillors.
TECHNOLOGY
The A614 is monitored by a SPECS3
POD (Portable Outstation Device)
installation, supplied by Vysionics. Blue
SPECS camera columns each hold two
SPECS3 cameras, with one camera mon-
itoring the northbound and the other
monitoring the southbound traffic.
These two cameras are connected
back to a roadside cabinet, containing a
SPECS3 POD. The POD contains a 3G
SIM card that wirelessly communicates
back to a remote ERCU (offence server),
located at the Nottinghamshire Police
offices. Because the A614 is mostly an
unlit road, a number of infra-red (IR)
lighting columns were installed; this
allows the capture of a well-defined
image on a completely dark road.
SPEED MONITORING
The primary purpose of a SPECS installa-
tion is usually to manage vehicle speeds,
thus reducing the likelihood and sever-
ity of collisions and casualties. The A614
has three loop sites within the SPECS
monitored zone, which allowed an accu-
rate comparison of vehicle speeds before
and after the SPECS installation. This
provided some very useful and interest-
ing data, which helps to explain exactly
why SPECS is such an effective casualty
reduction tool.
ILLUMINATION AND
NIGHT TIME IMAGES
Night time image from the A614. Note
that the image is greyscale, but the
vehicles plate is still clearly visible.
CHANGES IN DRIVER
BEHAVIOUR
As a quick summary, SPECS works
because it changes the way people think
and drive. Through a greater awareness
of the speed limit, and the fear that they
may receive a fine/points, the vast major-
ity of drivers keep their speed to very
near the posted speed limit. This effect
is shown on the two charts below, which
both come from loop data, covering peri-
ods before and after the SPECS cameras
were installed.
The charts (left) show vehicle speeds
seen at two times; in January 2012, which
was shortly before the SPECS cameras
were installed and in January 2013,
The pre-installation chart shows a
significant difference between the speeds
seen at night and speeds during the day. This
is largely because there is very little traffic
at night, so drivers tend to speed more.
The post-installation chart clearly demonstrates
how speeds have become much more uniform,
or harmonised. The night profile is virtually
the same as the day profile, demonstrating
that regardless of traffic volumes, vehicles are
travelling at just below the posted speed limit.
Speed enforcement
exactly one year later and finally, several
months after installation was completed.
Data is shown for three periods:
24hr (all vehicles over a 24hr period)
Peak (all vehicles in the most busy
hour)
Night (only vehicles seen between
22:00 and 04:00)
The vertical red line shows the speed
limit data to the right relates to speed-
ing vehicles
The pre-installation chart shows a
significant difference between the speeds
seen at night and speeds during the day.
This is largely because there is very little
traffic at night, so drivers tend to speed
more. The post-installation chart
clearly demonstrates how speeds have
become much more uniform, or harmo-
nised. The night profile is virtually the
same as the day profile, demonstrating
that regardless of traffic volumes, vehi-
cles are travelling at just below the posted
speed limit.
SPEED VARIABILITY (SD
STANDARD DEVIATION
OF VEHICLE SPEED)
Probably the most significant reason
behind the effectiveness of SPECS cam-
eras is the impact it has on speed variabil-
ity, or more accurately, the reduction in
the standard deviation of vehicle speed.
Before the cameras were installed, the
SD rose above 10mph during the night,
showing there was a very large speed dif-
ferential between the fastest and slow-
est vehicles using the road, at the same
time. Post installation, the SD remains
between 4 and 6mph. High variability is
more likely to result in collisions, which
obviously has an impact on casualties but
also traffic congestion.
CASUALTY REDUCTIONS
The primary purpose of a permanent
SPECS installation is usually casualty
reduction. A study of previous installa-
tions shows that without exception, the
casualty rates always drop significantly.
The formal measure of this is the Killed
or Seriously Injured (KSI) figure. It is
still early days to review this fully for
the A614, as the post installation data
only covers 16 months, compared to five
years of pre installation data. However,
before installation, on average 1.8 fatali-
ties occurred per year. Post installation,
no fatalities have occurred and the KSI
figure has dropped by 53.1 per cent.
WIDER BENEFITS
SPECS average speed cameras have now
been operated throughout the UK on
every available speed limit. Whilst the
primary purpose of a SPECS installation
is usually to reduce casualties and their
associated impact, through experience
from 300+ projects, Vysionics has also
identified further benefits:
Smoother traffic flows: Because speed
variability is reduced, with traffic travel-
ling at a common or harmonised speed,
traffic flows tend to be better. This results
in reduced congestion and a more reli-
able journey time. The reasons behind
this are similar to Managed Motorways,
where variable speed limits are used to
maximise the capacity of a motorway.
With a uniform speed, more vehicles can
fit onto the road and a conveyor belt type
flow is more consistent.
Greener environment: Travelling at a
sensible, steady speed burns less fuel and
results in lower emissions. In addition,
this means that engine and road noise are
reduced, along with less wear on the road
surface. Air quality and emissions are
an increasingly important issue for the
government, so this benefit will become
increasingly important.
Fairer and more acceptable: The trav-
elling public accept that average speed
enforcement is a fairer enforcement
solution, because drivers arent caught
unawares through a momentary lack of
judgement. In addition, because journey
reliability improves, many drivers actu-
ally welcome the use of our technology
because their drive to work will become
more predictable.
Sonya Hurt is the Casualty Reduction
Manager for Nottinghamshire County
Council. Of the benefits of the SPECS
approach, she said:
The SPECS installations are proving
year on year to be a known and effec-
tive method of reducing casualties both
countywide and nationwide. Where
these cameras have been used elsewhere
in the county, there has been an 80 per
cent reduction in the number of people
killed or seriously injured.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Geoff Collins is Sales & Marketing
Director at Vysionics ITS Ltd
geoff.collins@vysionics.com
www.vysionics.com
SPECS3 is widely used in Nottinghamshire in the UK
SPECS works because it changes
the way people think and drive
TECHNOLOGY Electronic toll collection
Emrihan Ozdemir takes a brief but fascinating look at the
history of tolling and Turkeys unique place in it
Clear recent history
T
olling on highways is a necessity
in todays world, largely because
of the fact that a highway with
driver-friendly physical and techno-
logical conditions is not easy to main-
tain without any return of investment.
Providing drivers with highways of high-
est quality, while pleasing them in terms
of affordable toll rates, may be the key
point among the fundamentals of oper-
ating a toll road.
Tollways are constructed considering
the overall traffic flow as a basis. The
first aim is to lower the complication at
intense traffic zones. The first tollway
was opened in 1921 in South Berlin,
Germany, was called AVUS and was
9km long, yet this road was not open to
daily vehicle traffic and was just being
used as racetrack. On the other hand,
the first tollway which was open to daily
vehicle traffic had been initiated in Italy
connecting Milano and Como, in 1924.
After 1925, government and private sec-
tor members in Germany quickly started
to construct tollways all over the coun-
try and then the trend started to spread
around the World. The Bosphorus
Bridge in Istanbul, the road that connects
Europe to Asia, was actually a stretch of
the first tollway in Turkey, which was
opened in 1973.
BACK TO THE PRIMITIVE
Before the last decade, tolling was per-
formed by human operators at cash-
desks a largely primitive solution to the
problem of how money will be collected
from drivers traveling on these costly
highways. An increasing number of vehi-
cles showed up with uncalculated and
unexpected problems which urgently
needed to be solved. One of the most sig-
nificant of these problems was the traffic
congestion at the tollbooths on account
of the long queues. Entrance with mag-
netic tapes given by dispensers at entry
lanes and tolling with these tapes at exit
lanes was the first attempt to reduce the
traffic congestion occuring around the
tollbooth, but it was not enough to com-
pletely clear the congestion. Later, when
ITS technology had become more wide-
spread, tolling began to be executed by
prepaid smartcards at entry and exit lanes
which required drivers to make two stops
at entry and exit gates. This helped a little
bit, but it was still was not enough.
There was now a pressing need for
a combination of tolling methods that
would enable users not to stop at entry
and exit gates but to pay on the move.
This sounded a little bit unlikely as up
to that point there was no technology
which could make such a practice even
remotely possible. However, thanks to
the invention of Dedicated Short-Range
Communications (DSRC) and Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) tech-
nologies, the tolling world has been
revolutionised. It allowed drivers to pay
their toll at up to 40km/h without having
to stop at a barrier or slow to a halt and
hand over some coins. First, DSRC tech-
nology was used to allow tolling without
pausing at tollbooths. The results were
satisfactory and congestion was lowered
to acceptable levels. DSRC was good, but
even that wasn not enough for ensuring
it was the technology of the future.
Compared with Passive RFID tags,
DSRC transponders were expensive,
too bulky and not adequately eligible The Bosphorous Bridge was a stretch of the first tollway in Turkey which opened in 1973
Electronic toll collection
An increasing number of vehicles showed up with uncalculated and
unexpected problems which urgently needed to be solved
for in-motion reading and by this stage
prepaid Passive RFID tags had begun
to be used in tolling projects. One of the
first Passive RFID applications for elec-
tronic tolling in the world, was launched
by Turkish company Vendeka IT Ltd
in September 2012 on all highways and
Bosphorus bridges in Turkey; this was
called the Fast Passing System. The motto
of the project was to enable users to pass
faster along toll lanes. It worked and today
passive RFID solutions for electronic toll-
ing projects have become widespread.
Vendeka made a splash with Europes
biggest and most successful Passive
RFID Electronic Toll Collection Project
(HGS) on Turkeys highways and bridges
(Bosphorus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet)
passing through Istanbul which connect
Asia to Europe. The overall system archi-
tecture of a passive RFID electronic toll
collection project is shown in the flow
chart below.
Vendeka has been integrating new
passive RFID technology within the
scope of any toll/fare collection project
independent from whatever the project
requirements are. The primary goal is
to be the key integrator when consider-
ing any kind of electronic toll collec-
tion project. Within the scope of this
goal, theyre integrating custom solu-
tions which may be used on any kind of
vehicle. In addition, Vendeka also cre-
ates particular solutions for any specific
target group. For example, GNSS can be
used for tolling of trucks or vehicles such
as half-tracks or logistics trucks. GNSS is
used for electronic tolling by evaluating
the position and checkpoint entry-exit
data. It is not suitable for personal auto-
mobile usage, because of the fact that the
in-built GPS system to be mounted in
cars is not particularly cost-effective for
end-users and its also not consistent with
the principle of privacy.
Vendeka specialises in custom-
designed Passive RFID ETC solutions
that are appropriate for any kind of vehi-
cle. Turkeys Passive RFID ETC system
integrated by Vendeka also has the dis-
tinction of being the first ETC project
that enables the tolling of any kind of
vehicle using the highway, so that opera-
tors maintain maximum profit margins
while at the same time sustaining cus-
tomer satisfaction.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A. Emirhan Ozdemir is Business
Development Engineer at Vendeka
www.vendeka.com.tr
System
architecture of a
passenger RFID
ETC project
TECHNOLOGY Toll roads
T
raditionally, the roads in Russia
have not only been routes for
transportation of people and
vehicles, but a certain life philosophy. In
the modern world, the meaning of roads
has perhaps lost the symbolical implica-
tion, but has at the same time gained an
important economical and social status:
a developed region has an extensive net-
work of modern roads. But the question
arises: What is a modern road?
Until quite recently, the very existence
of a route between point A and point B
had been a good sign an asphalted road
without potholes was the ultimate goal.
However, in 2014 a smooth surface
and clear markings are not a surprise
anymore. New demands emerge with the
increasing number of vehicles, and the
industry faces new standards the stand-
ards of Intelligent Transport Systems.
Construction of new roads equipped
with contemporary ITS systems is now
one of the most relevant tasks in Russia.
The example of European countries
proves that ITS can successfully solve
a number of problems connected with
the growth of transport flow intensity,
positively influencing accident-free
driving, increasing the effectiveness of
infrastructure usage and diminishing
environmental pollution.
To ensure the maximum possibili-
ties for ITS development, it is vital that
the roads are as sustainable as possible.
One way to achieve that is by introduc-
ing a toll system within an ITS frame-
work. The introduction of toll roads
Dmitriy Plotnikov on
the importance of toll
roads, and roads in
general, to the overall
well-being of a
developing country
Another level
Toll roads
The results have exceeded all expectations as the collection of tolls
allowed for more active development of the road infrastructure
can significantly increase the economic
effects, connected with the lowering of
haulage costs, transport companies prof-
its increase, an an improvement in the
quality and convenience of roads.
The State now also has the opportunity
to develop road infrastructure and toll-
ing affords it the potential to make ITS
autonomous, subsidy-free and also lay
the foundation for the systems evolution.
BREAKING NEW GROUND
One of the first companies in Russian
ITS market was Techno-Traffic. Since the
very beginning it was clear that the com-
plexity of implementing and managing
ITS programmes requires a technically
complex approach: scientific, engineer-
ing, design and construction.
The companys experts have analysed
a significant part of some of the leading
international experience of system imple-
mentation, accounted for elements with
a particular advantage for the Russian
culture and discarded those steps and
technologies that might prove problem-
atic from the point of view of climate and
mentality.
In the course of working on sev-
eral projects it was possible to define,
conceptually formalize and introduce
Automated Traffic Management systems
called Magistral and Gorod.
As a result, in December 2010, the
company successfully launched the first
Russian toll road, a tolled section of
Federal Route M-4 Don, on km 414-464
in the Lipetsk region. The drivers appre-
ciated the advantages of the toll road
convenience, higher speed of transit, less
time spent spent in traffic. The original
speed limit was 90 km/h, but in June
2011 it was raised up to 110 km/h.
The first experience of operation
allowed the company and its experts and
technicians to widen its knowledge base
and perfect the solutions.
The results have exceeded all expec-
tations as the collection of tolls allowed
for more active development of the road
infrastructure and increased financ-
ing of the existing roads. According to
the results of State company Russian
Highways activities, in 2013, over 26m
drivers have used the toll sectors of the
Federal route M-4 Don. Of those 70 per
cent (18.2m) were passenger vehicles and
30 per cent (7.8m) trucks. The amount
of finance to come due to tolling in 2013
equalled 1.46 billion roubles (32m).
DIAMETRICALLY PROPOSED
Since 2010, the experts of Techno-Traffic
have been putting into practice their
experience in toll road construction and
Automated Traffic Control systems in
the designing of the Western High Speed
Diameter in Saint-Petersburg, on the
Southern and Northern sectors.
A peculiar feature of this highway
is that this is a strategical investment
project of the city of Saint-Petersburg,
defining the development of the city
as a transport cluster of international
standard, thus creating the shortcut
between Southern and Northern regions.
Creating and exploiting systems on
such a scale demands a complex set of
TECHNOLOGY Toll roads
interconnected tasks and the company
have been very successful in execut-
ing them due to having well-developed
generic technical, organizational and
legal solutions, adapted to various social-
economical, infrastructure, climatic and
other conditions.
Upon construction of the first toll sta-
tions, the company experimented with
implementing typically European sys-
tems, but then faced certain difficulties,
associated with the specifics of the con-
struction and operation of Russias road
infrastructure. Because of that, the deci-
sion was made to opt for the first Russian
tolling system RUTOLL.
RUTOLL allows for the taking into
account Russian specifics regarding bank
and tax legislation, minimizes the impor-
tance of the human factor and automates
the cashier-operators work. The impor-
tant point, founded in the ideology of
RUTOLL, is the interoperability the
possibility of integration with both the
subsystems of the line level (license plate
recognition, weigh-in-motion systems)
and the systems of the dispatch centers.
In cooperation with the Institute for
Information Transmission a unique
automatic vehicle video-classification
system was designed and implemented.
The principle of video-classification is
based on the analysis of video-flow with
the use of computer-vision technology.
SYSTEMATIC, AUTOMATIC
In the field of Automated Traffic Control
systems, Techno-Traffic has imple-
mented projects within the most promi-
nent in the country:
The Third Transport Ring (in coopera-
tion with Siemens);
Federal route M-4 Don;
Ring Road, St Petersburg;
Western High Speed Diameter,
St Petersburg;
Alternate Federal route 1 Belarus;
Olympic facilities, Sochi
General management and coordination
of all interconnected systems takes place
in Traffic Management Centres, where
the information on the traffic situation is
collected, stored, processed and the com-
munication with the road users is car-
ried out. Along the length of all the toll
sectors equipped with the traffic man-
agement systems (including toll sectors)
vehicle safety is kept under close scrutiny.
Advanced methods of design engineering
allows for solving both global and local
problems in design and survey work in
the transport industry, and it also means
that losses, both human and transport-
related, are diminishing rapidly.
The strategic goal of the company is
simple the introduction of a new level
of road infrastructure, thus creating a
global standard for traffic safety and
driver comfort on the roads of Russia.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dmitriy Plotnikov is vice-president
of Techno-Traffic
plotnikov@technotraffic.ru
www.technotraffic.ru
Thanks to Julia Nelepa for
translating the original Russian
article into English
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EC PROJECTS POSSE
Open specifications, open source and open data for
the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, by Eirik
Skjetne and Hans Westerheim
Leading from
the front
N
orway is a relatively small country and therefore
offers a small market for the ITS industry. This has
led to monopolistic developments in the supplier
market. The major suppliers easily become dominant in the
market and it becomes very hard for new and smaller com-
petitors to secure contracts. These are unwanted market con-
ditions and can lead to an increase in the prices.
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) is
responsible for the planning, construction and operation of
the national and major urban road networks including infor-
mation services and all traffic management. Management of
the national legal framework and recommendations for road
transport are also under the responsibility of the NPRA. As
the main buyer of ITS and other road equipment in Norway,
NPRA is responsible for supporting and developing a sound
and competitive market with fair prices. The underlying
challenge in doing this is a combination of a lack of compe-
tence on the buyers side and the fact that the total size of the
market is too small to be interesting for suppliers.
OPEN SOLUTIONS
NPRA has developed different approaches to meet these
challenges:
Using open standards and international standardisation,
on the one hand
Developing a national set of specifications, on the other.
When the international market becomes mature it normally
also develops either common international standards (CEN,
ISO etc) or de facto industry standards that are used by the
industry. The market is international and the prices are set
internationally. The whole industry normally supports the
solutions and the interfaces, which again is securing interop-
erability between solutions from the different suppliers.
The standardisation process is however extensive and
often very slow. Experience has shown that it cannot keep
up with the fast pace of development of new technology.
To meet this challenge it is helpful for the buyers to define
their own specifications. The specification might be techni-
cally very specific, but such specifications are not normally
open for the required innovation. One might end up buy-
ing the technology of yesterday. Therefore functional speci-
fications are preferable; i.e. NPRA describes the objectives
including all necessary interfaces leaving the technical
solutions to the industry.
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCES
These open solutions (using open standards and international
standardisation and development of a national set of specifica-
tions) have been tried out in Norway. NPRA started the devel-
opment of electronic tags for tolling in 1986. The need came
from the introduction of urban tolling schemes. The develop-
ment of the system was carried out by the Norwegian com-
pany MicroDesign AS (known since 1998 as Q-Free ASA).
It was technically a very advanced system, but there was
only one supplier of the system. Some years later, the new
5.8GHz DSRC standard was approved in CEN. NPRA
The NPRAs use of open standards and international standards as well
as national specifications will help develop and support a sound and
competitve market with fair prices
POSSE
Functional specifications are preferable; i.e. NPRA describes the
objectives including all necessary interfaces leaving the technical
solutions to the industry
decided to convert all Norwegian tolling systems to the new
standard. This was put in practice with the development of a
new national specification for electronic tolling, AutoPASS.
AutoPASS is a detailed technical specification for tolling
systems including tags, roadside equipment and back-office
processing. The specification is open, but owned by NPRA.
It has led to the development of a tolling equipment market
with several competitive suppliers and a substantial decrease
in prices. As such this has been a success story, but the
AutoPASS specification is not open for much innovation and
new technologies. This is the drawback with detailed techni-
cal demands in the standard.
In another project, NPRA has worked together with the
other Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Finland and
Iceland) to develop a common technology for traffic monitor-
ing, the NORSIKT-project. One major reason for the project
was to open the market for this kind of equipment. Each
country had developed its own equipment in the 1980-90. By
cooperating in common specifications and testing procedures
the countries wanted to establish a substantially larger market
for suppliers of traffic monitoring equipment. These specifica-
tions are functional and only describe monitoring demands
and interfaces that the equipment must fulfil.
Last year Norway launched the first tender for a new gen-
eration monitoring equipment based on this specification.
The experience so far is that the prices have dropped by
nearly 50 per cent.
OVERALL INTEROPERABILITY FRAMEWORK
To secure interoperability and reuse of equipment NPRA
has been engaged in developing a reference system archi-
tecture, or an overall framework for interoperability. The
ARKTRANS framework was developed as a multi-modal
framework to support the development of ITS systems in
1999. There has been great interest in this framework and it
has been really helpful in defining overall and generic roles
and responsibility related to ITS. Attempts to use the frame-
work as a supporting tool also in commercial projects and
product development have been done with varying success.
The framework has proven good in system development
in R&D-projects, but it has been difficult to convert this to
detailed technical system design.
One of the main challenges is to be able to relate the
overall definitions supporting interoperability to the needs
present when working with technical interoperability.
NPRA has realised that the technical development itself
will remain outside the control of NPRA, and there is there-
fore a need to be able to link fast technology development
with the more stable overall concepts and functions in the
ARKTRANS framework.
NPRA has learned that both UK (UTMC) and German
speaking countries (OCIT/OTS) have been working with
national system specifications. The background being very
much similar to the one described in Norway. The two
national-oriented initiatives were launched over a decade
ago to overcome the closed-system nature of traffic man-
agement and ITS. Polis, the European network of cities and
regions for innovative transport solutions, invited both ini-
tiatives to a Polis members meeting in 2010 in order to learn
more about them and to ascertain the interest of cities and
regions elsewhere in Europe in the open systems approach.
The meeting revealed that the problems of system fragmen-
tation, vendor lock-in and market monopoly are widespread
throughout the continent. This led to the POSSE project
(www.openits-posse.eu) supported by the EUs INTERREG
IVC programme.
The main aim of POSSE is to raise awareness of the need
for open specifications and standards and to share the
experiences of existing open system frameworks in Europe.
A central objective of the project is to build the capacity
EC PROJECTS POSSE
will include workshops coordinating the core activities and
especially, of relevance to POSSE, workshops directly focus-
ing on the framework/architecture. Representatives from the
UK and German open systems frameworks will be involved
in some of these workshops.
THE WAY FORWARD
Common open specifications and standards are impor-
tant for deployment of ITS. The total public budget for ITS
investments is relatively fixed at the moment. By opening
up the ITS market, road authorities can install and develop
more systems to the benefit of the transport sector. The work
with open systems and specifications will therefore contrib-
ute strongly to the objectives of the European ITS Action
Plan about faster deployment of ITS.
NPRA has defined this as an important element in the
updated ITS strategy of 2012. We believe in cooperation to
develop these open systems together with the supplier indus-
try. A larger market will lead to greater innovation and utili-
sation of new technology and deliver better systems.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Eirik Skjetne is Head of ITS at the Norwegian Public
Roads Administration
Hans Westerheim works at the Department of
Software Engineering, Safety and Security at SINTEF
www.posse-openits.eu/
of transport authorities to implement open specifications
and standards. In addition, POSSE is drawing up a good
practice guide for the implementation of open specifica-
tions and standards.
Through its involvement in POSSE, NPRA is learning
more about how to develop a common specification frame-
work for ITS. There is a strong belief that the market for ITS
will benefit greatly if Europe can develop common and open
specifications. This will give more value for the taxpayers
and road users money. NPRAs main activity in POSSE
involves defining and specifying the functionality of an ITS
station with the help of ARKTRANS.
Our main goal is that specifications for the ITS station
should be compatible with the UTMC and OCIT/OTS speci-
fications. The ITS station shall cover a wide range of uses:
from quite simple data collection at the roadside to being
an element in data distribution in cooperative systems. The
expectation is that the ITS station will work well with open
standards like OPC UA (Open Processing Communication
Unified Architecture), and DATEX II, standards/specifica-
tions for data exchange between traffic centres, service pro-
viders, traffic operators and media partners.
The POSSE activity forms one of three core activities in
the development of the ITS station. The other two main
activities will be the definition of technology specifications
inside the ITS station and the establishment of a structure/
methodology linking architecture/framework and technol-
ogy/ specifications closer together. The development work
There is a strong belief that the market for ITS will benefit
greatly if Europe can develop common and open specifications
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COUNTRY FOCUS: Finland
Karri Rantasila and Matti Lankinen on FITSRUS,
the project that facilitates smoother passenger
traffic across the FinnishRussian border
Flow mechanics
T
he FITSRUS (HelsinkiSt. Petersburg Smart Trans
port Corridor) project promotes smoother traffic
flows, enhanced safety, environment friendliness,
and improved services in smart transport corridor between
Helsinki, the Finnish capital and St. Petersburg, Russia, cov-
ering all modes of transport.
In the first phase new services are introduced for pas-
sengers, car drivers and public transport. Development of
the VEDIA Multi-Service concept, led by VTT Technical
Research Centre of Finland and Vediafi Ltd, brings together
newly opened mobile services that will result in smoother
passenger traffic across the FinnishRussian border.
Road traffic between Finland and Russia is very busy and
has been constantly growing. The amount of crossings of
the Finnish-Russian border grew 13 per cent in 2012 with
a total number of crossings of 12 million. The road between
Helsinki and St. Petersburg (E18) is a part of the pan-Euro-
pean network (TEN-T) and it is developed actively both in
Finland and Russia. Key problems for border crossers have
been identified, including roaming charges and reliability of
operation, poor accessibility of weather and driving condi-
tion information throughout the journey, and poor usability
and availability of services in various languages. These issues
arose in the survey conducted among border crossers, par-
ticularly Russians.
Cooperation between Russian and Finnish public and
private stakeholders is also crucial for deploying services.
Several key actors are involved to FITSRUS project from
both sides including ministries, research institutions, major
companies, and authorities. The roots of this cooperation
were established between Finnish and Russian Governments
in 2011 with Memorandum of Understanding. Intelligent
Transport Systems (ITS) was further appointed as a prior-
ity area of Transport Policy and Intelligent Transport System
strategy and development in both countries. In addition, a
General Plan for Smart Transport Corridor Development
was accepted by Finnish and Russian Ministries of Transport
in August 2012.
STEP FORWARD
The first steps towards realizing the multi-service concept
for ITS services in Finland had already been taken in R&D
projects that kicked off in the spring of 2009. The main goal
of these projects was to develop necessary functional specifi-
cations, business models, legal and institutional frameworks
and architectures for key ITS services. Later on the work
FITSRUS
The main goal of these projects was to develop necessary functional
specifications, business models, legal and institutional frameworks
and architectures for key ITS services
continued with actual development of the services, related
proof-of-concepts and final Multi-Service architecture for
mobility services in FITSRUS project.
The VEDIA Multi-Service is a key element of FITSRUS
pilots, which were launched in Spring 2014. VEDIA Multi-
Services are available to road and railway transport users,
but will later also cover travel chains using other forms of
transport. First to be introduced are automatic services for
road weather and driving conditions, an automatic system
issuing bulletins and warnings on traffic disruption, a real-
time traffic and congestion information service, and a public
transport information service.
For those travelling by train, the VEDIA services will
become available in the fast Allegro trains travelling between
Helsinki and St. Petersburg. The services will be imple-
mented on the Finnish National Railway Company VR
Group Ltd on-board wireless Internet, and are available to
all train passengers via smart phones and mobile devices.
VEDIA train services provide passengers with additional
information on journey progress, train station bulletins,
news headlines, weather information, and connecting traf-
fic data at the destination. The VEDIA services will be pro-
duced on board the train, and are therefore unaffected by
poor reception, particularly in the border zone. All services
are delivered to end-users via multi-service platform based
on HTML5 based VEDIA Multi-Service.
In the VEDIA Multi-Service, the problems associated with
roaming will be reduced by making the Internet connec-
tion and VEDIA services available free of charge on board
Allegro trains and at the Vaalimaa border crossing station.
The Russian Yandex-Money payment solution will enable
unlimited data use with the Finnish teleoperator DNA Ltds
prepaid subscription SIM (Subscriber Indentity Module)
cards on VEDIAs SIM card top-up service. There are also
plans for developing a similar service for those travelling to
Russia.
INFORMATION EXCHANGE
The solution is based on data exchange in which coopera-
tion is being built between the authorities and enterprises
in both countries. This will allow traffic and road condition
information to be made available to consumers, for example,
via Rajaliikenne.fi, which is the information service for road
users and VEDIA applications. Other additions to the VEDIA
Multi-Service will include an online translation service and
public transport information that will introduce connecting
Other additions to the VEDIA Multi-Service will include an online
translation service and public transport information that will
introduce connecting traffic as part of the application
traffic as part of the application. In addition to this, VEDIAs
mobile SMS payment system can be used, for example, to pay
for single tickets in rail traffic within Helsinki.
There are many possibilities to expand multi-service con-
cept from services piloted in the first phase. As current
pilots are focused on cross-border passenger traffic
mainly on rail and road, plan is to expand services
to cover other transport modes and extended
transport corridors, for example via E18 Road
and towards Moscow direction in the east
and to Western Finland. The concept can be
also multiplied to other major international
corridors.
A key for successful piloting is a seam-
less cooperation between different stake-
holders and funding organizations in both
countries. Also the work done in research
projects cannot be over addressed as les-
sons learned and background work has
provided a solid base for deployment of
services. The project will be implemented
in cooperation between public and pri-
vate organizations in Finland and Russia. In
Finland, the responsible party is the Ministry of
Transport and Communications. Other parties also
closely involved in service implementation include
the Finnish Transport Agency and the Finnish Transport
Safety Agency Trafi.
A service consortium has been established to imple-
ment the services, including about a dozen companies both
in Finland and Russia. The implementing is managed by
Vediafi Ltd and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
VEDIA Multi-Services are available at www.vedia.fi and will
be introduced at the ITS Europe 2014 conference, to be held
in Helsinki in June.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Karri Rantasila is Key Account Manager at VTT
Technical Research of Finland
Matti Lankinen is Chairman of the Board at Vediafi
Ltd
karri.rantasila@vtt.fi
www.vtt.fi
www.vedia.fi
www.rajaliikenne.fi
www.trafi.fi
Main services included in the Vedia
service are:
Weather services
Road services, help for car travelers (provider: Falck)
Connecting traffic & public transportation information
Translation services / RUS-FIN
Travel insurance purchase functionality
(mandatory for travellers)
Road info, fastest route over border
Border queue information
Shell & ST1 station locations
Wi-Fi hotspot on border
SIM card top-up, prepaid subscription provided by DNA
Mobile data access
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A new public and private sector initiative is
creating new possibilities in road traffic services.
Eemil Rauma and Elias Pyry reveal all
The internet
of traffic
N
ew possibilities are arising from the emerging revo-
lution in personal transport. The efficiency leap
brought by IT to other sectors of society has yet to be
experienced in road traffic, which is one of the largest busi-
nesses in the world. The Finnish authorities and companies
together with international companies are looking to bridge
this market gap with an innovative project. The Finnish
Ministry of Transport and Communications has launched
an experimental project on electronic transport services for
20142015 together with industry players, a pilot to activate
the market for applications and services in road traffic, which
goes under the name Traffic lab. Here the role of IT is to inte-
grate road traffic more strongly with other transport modes
and to embed it in a smart environment and infrastructure.
THE CHANGE TOWARDS TRAFFIC AS A
SERVICE
The value of Finnish transport markets alone is 50 bil-
lion from which households and companies are paying the
lions share. Given this huge market, even small efficiency
improvements can bring substantial savings to companies,
consumers and to the public sector. For example in the
metropolitan area of Helsinki almost 40 per cent of the time
the delivery cars and trucks are is consumed by searching
for unloading and loading places.
The rising costs of transport services guaranteed in
the law to the elderly, handicapped and other groups are
increasing constantly whereas the solvency of the public
sector is diminishing. This causes a dire need to improve
Kutsuplus, which operates at main urban area of the city of Helsinki, is a new kind of demand-based public transport service which combines
the benefits of bus and taxi into a single service
Traffic lab
the efficiency of these services. The best way to do this is
by bringing novel solutions from the IT side to road traffic.
By introducing the Traffic lab project, the ministry aims to
tests new electronic services and new operating models for
road transport in cooperation with other authorities and the
private sector.
This paves the way for a change towards traffic as a serv-
ice, a model based on a new kind of demand by consum-
ers. This is an inevitable path of traffic evolution as services
are moving towards a pay how you drive principle. Market
forecasts predict that up to 50 per cent of vehicle insurance
payment schemes in 2020 will be based on actual use and at
the same time usage-based pricing will be adopted for both
vehicle leasing charges and car loans.
A MOVING REVOLUTION
As mobile Internet, positioning systems and a host of serv-
ices and applications are becoming an integral part of road
traffic, they also open doors for a larger paradigm shift. This
enables the consumers to choose the best way to move from
place to place and the companies to provide these services.
All this is enabled by the Internet of Traffic that is the key
to new services. Whilst the setup and technology are simple
and foreseeable, the Internet of traffic will revolutionize the
way we move. It will include
Mobile broadband
Navigation
New handy interfaces
New services
As the technology is evolving, so are our experiences as
consumers. We demand more and more from our cars and
nowadays the most important factor in selecting a new car
isnt the old power and acceleration figures or energy effi-
ciency, but vehicle connectivity to the outside world and
the onboard technology options
1
. Cars are evolving into an
important media consumption channel and becoming a new
part of our everyday connected devices. We spend around
90 minutes a day in traffic and as new technologies make
the interaction between users, vehicle and environment pos-
sible, it grants the users the access to social media, games and
interactivity with the surroundings. This brings entertain-
ment in cars to a whole new level and is part of the more
general trend of gamification. Connected cars are gaining
growing market shares in western counties. This is also
backed up by government regulation, which requires cars to
be fitted with e-Call or positioning systems depending on the
country and region.
GOALS OF TRAFFIC LAB
Traffic lab combines the best of both worlds by bringing the
private and the public sector to work together in creating
something new and valuable services that make your per-
sonal transportation easy, smart and ecological. Finland has
a long history in successful public-private-partnership and
this is a definite advantage in making the phrase Finland is
Traffic lab come true.
The project has four goals:
Ignition of the consumer market for traffic applications.
The project aims to promote consumer markets in elec-
tronic transport services and to analyze impacts the serv-
ices will have. The pilot acts as the first push for electronic
user services in vehicle transport in Finland. The goal of
the market demonstration is to pilot the model in the con-
sumer market.
Common platform for commercial and public mobile
services
Private and public sector services will be provided within
the same service package. This requires specification of
interfaces, procedures and technological requirements.
Enhancing the know-how of public offices
During the trial the public authority will develop a capa-
bility to procure, use and produce information over the
ecosystem services model (Designated project of the
authority)
NOTE
1 Forrester research 29.02.2014
Cars are evolving into an important media consumption channel and
becoming a new part of our everyday connected devices
Figure 1. Common platform for commercial
and public mobile services
Support the market through innovative procurement
Participation is limited to companies or company groups
that:
1. Are able to produce road pricing data to public authorities
2. Enable traffic apps
3. Commit to the operating model and preconditions
Preconditions may include for example vehicle classes and
types, price level of data, privacy protection, technical capa-
bility (SLA), etc. Conditions do not include specific tech-
nologies, company size or scope of operations, etc. The
authorities are open for any technological approaches from
the industry.
ROLE OF AUTHORITIES AND EXAMPLE
SERVICES FROM THE MARKET
The authorities are at the same time performing the roles
of a customer and a provider. This means that on one hand
authorities are buying information from the companies who
gather this from their fleets and on the other hand they are
also providers as they give their own data for companies to
use. Companies gather their data from their fleets that are
fitted with data collecting devices. The customers who allow
this device to be installed to their cars receive compensa-
tion from the authorities and can immediately access the
new services. In accordance with the Finnish government
decision in spring 2013, the project will also test technology
solutions, readiness and applications of transport pricing
systems. No actual taxation or obligatory information dis-
closure from private people to the authorities is related to the
project at this stage
Examples of novel products born in the pilot include
remote maintenance and repair services, an automatic driv-
ing diary, which automatically produces report for the tax
authorities if needed, different kinds of fleet management
programs, parking slot booking services and many more.
HOW TO GET ABOARD?
Traffic lab is open to all kinds of companies and consorti-
ums who wish to take part in developing new kind of traffic
services. Businesses can test and develop their own services
and applications in a real market ecosystem. The state has
the role of a customer and a provider of opportunities and
the businesses themselves will invest in the development of
their operations. The estimated budget for the entire project
is 58m. The market demonstration was launched in spring
2014 and it will last until the end of 2015. At the end of the
project its effectiveness and user experiences will be exam-
ined. The project will be presented at the ITS Europe 2014
Congress in Helsinki in June. After the test period, the mar-
ket is supposed to continue on its own without government
intervention. Government or municipalities may still want
to buy services or traffic data from the companies involved
after the test period.
A pilot of commercial actors and the authorities is divided
into two projects that will be carried out at different stages:
A service pilot project that creates rules and necessary def-
initions for the provision of both public and private sector
services on the same service platform. The authorities will
develop their activities so that they can buy both real-time
and distance-based information on charge criteria, and
businesses will develop their ability to provide services on
a so-called multiservice platform.
A market demonstration project, under which compa-
nies sell their services that have been provided under the
multiservice principle to end users and other busi-
nesses. The services in the project are market-based and
the authority creates opportunities for new markets by
buying information and services from commercial
Businesses can test and develop their own services and applications
in a real market ecosystem
Figure 2. Enhancing the know-how of public offices Figure 3. Support the market through innovative procurement
Traffic lab
actors. In order to participate in the market demonstra-
tion project, the actor/consortium must be able to deliver
information or service that the authority needs in accord-
ance with the requirement level and service and pricing
levels following the multi service principle. The aim at the
market demonstration stage is to create a service ecosys-
tem that enhances the chances of small and medium-sized
service providers to offer their services.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Eemil Rauma is an analyst with EERA
Elias Pyry is coordinator of the Traffic Lab initiative
and executive director of Electric Traffic
eemil.rauma@eera.fi
elias.poyry@eera.fi
www.eera.fi
FLIR ITS ads Trafibot HD 190x117.indd 1 17/04/14 14:54
Figure 4. Pilot for services
and Applications in Road
Traffic milestones
Vehicular networking and road weather services are advancing
traffic safety in Finland, say Timo Sukuvaara, Pertti Nurmi,
Evgeny Atlaskin, Kari Menp and Riika Ylitalo
Driving back
the elements
V
ehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V) and
between vehicles and roadside infrastructure (V2I)
has been widely studied as an enabler of enhance-
ments in traffic safety and efficiency. In recent studies the
role of road weather information and vehicle-oriented
observations have been recognized as key elements in the
safety enhancements. These elements form the major objec-
tives in the European Eureka/Celtic Plus project CoMoSeF
(Co-operative Mobility Services of the Future), creating co-
operative mobility solutions (including devices and applica-
tions) feasible for large-scale deployment.
In practice this means communication systems between
vehicles as well as between vehicles and infrastructure
employing interactive testing of safety and weather infor-
mation exchange services. FMI (Finnish Meteorological
Institute) has an essential role in the project as a profes-
sional weather service provider. FMI is especially focused
on approaches to employ CoMoSef vehicular networking
entities to provide route weather information for vehicles
bypassing a combined Road Weather Station (RWS)/Road
Side Unit (RSU). Route weather is a special type of weather
service tailored for dedicated road stretches and is based on
a road weather model and data collected from local RWS and
from vehicles themselves.
CoMoSeF creates a co-operative communication system
between vehicles and vehicles and infrastructure. The aim is
not only to service vehicles, but also to exploit vehicle-origi-
nated data. Similarly, road-side units are not just serving the
vehicles as connectivity points, but they also host RWS capa-
bilities to provide additional data for the services. In some
cases it may even be more important to have RWS capabilities
while compromising the wireless vehicular communications.
Intelligent wireless traffic service platforms with new
types of vehicular services for improved traffic safety have
been widely studied, among them in the WiSafeCar project
that preceded CoMoSeF. CoMoSeF itself brings existing and
emerging sensors, services and communication solutions
closer to market and creates the business models needed.
One issue is vehicle-bus (eg CAN) as a data source. Back-end
applications, road side units and road sensors are employed
to support drivers decisions. An RWS stores and maintains
information collected from the near environment of ITS
CoMoSeF
The CoMoSef project development focuses on nomadic devices
with cost-effective services, which are easy to implement and
deploy in all vehicles
Station in its vicinity, based on geo-casting delivery software
and a Local Dynamic Map database.
The CoMoSef project development focuses on nomadic
devices with cost-effective services, which are easy to imple-
ment and deploy in all vehicles. The main envisioned services
are the aforementioned weather-related services, warning of
poor sections, speeding warnings, safety margin warnings,
friction monitoring and forecasting, fog vision detection
driver visibility improvement and driver behavior detection,
respectively. For the demonstration purposes the idea is to
develop and deploy Road Weather Testbeds to test wire-
less networks and communications in public with advanced
communication applications. In the demonstrations con-
ducted and yet to come, our goal is to use the local RWS data
to generate road weather services and build simple commu-
nication procedures around the RWS location to deliver the
data to the vehicles.
STATION TO STATION
In order to fulfill these tasks, FMI has constructed a special
RWS nearby to its facilities in Sodankyl in northern Finland.
The station is equipped with up-to-date road weather meas-
urement instrumentation, compatible (but not limited to)
with the equipment expected to also be available in the
Vehicle user interface
(UI) for RWS data
Combined Road Weather Station
(RWS)/Road Side Unit (RSU)
demonstration sites own, permanent and locally owned
RWS. The procedure is to design, develop and test both the
local road weather service generation and the service data
delivery between RWS and vehicles.
The CoMoSef project will use the IEEE 802.11p stand-
ard as the primary communication entity, with supporting
LTE, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11g/n) and cellular networking (3G)
as the alternative communication methods if IEEE 802.11p
based system or equipment is not available. In the Sodankyl
RWS there is the IEEE 802.11p primary com-
munication system, supplemented with parallel
Wi-Fi communication and alternative 3G com-
munication, respectively. In the Sodankyl com-
bined RWS/RSU scenario the focus is on V2I
communication.
The vehicle bypassing the combined Road
Weather Station and Road Side Unit (RWS/RSU)
is supplemented wirelessly and automatically
with up-to-date road weather data and services,
and also potentially available vehicle-oriented
measurement data are delivered upwards. The
local server in RWS/RSU hosts the station opera-
tions. It is linked with a NEC Linkbird-MX
modem for IEEE 802.11p communications but
has also an internal Wi-Fi modem. Both of these
communication channels are actively seeking the
bypassing vehicle communication systems. The local server
is also gathering measurement data from two different meas-
urement entities, Vaisala Rosa road weather measurement
system and FMI weather station measurements, respectively.
The data from these sources, together with possible vehicle-
oriented data are sorted and further delivered to FMI local
facilities through a 3G communication link. The advanced
services are developed in FMI facilities and delivered back to
the RWS/RSU to be further delivered to vehicles. The same
software entity maintains the data delivery between RWS
and vehicles and RWS and FMI site, while gathering and
updating the local weather data from the RWS/RSU.
FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED
The main advantage of RWS/RSU is the exploitation of
local RWS and vehicle data for up-to-date weather services.
Adverse road weather conditions like icy roads, fog, heavy
precipitation and strong winds can cause accidents, traffic
congestions and delays. Forecasting and weather informa-
tion systems and applications have been actively developed
by FMI, since the Finnish wintertime weather conditions
can be extremely demanding. A state-of-the-art operational
real-time road weather forecast system covering the whole
of Finland is being run operationally by FMI to serve traffic
safety needs.
FMI will implement and further develop road weather
systems for the test sites. The basis for road weather analysis
and forecasting is a 3-dimensional atmospheric Numerical
Weather Prediction (NWP) model which is based on physical-
mathematical equations describing the state of the atmos-
phere. Such models simulate the major physical processes
behind different weather phenomena and produce explicit
forecasts of various meteorological quantities. The models
can also produce post-processed output variables defin-
ing different road conditions like dry, wet, frosty, snowy, or
icy conditions. The forecast domain of the model covers the
whole of Europe and the idea is to downscale it to test sites.
To produce road weather forecasts along individual road
stretches we need to tackle higher spatial and time resolu-
tions than presently available. To accomplish this we employ
a method of dividing road stretches into a number of seg-
ments and performing model simulations for each segment.
Depending on available computer resources, the scale of a
road segment can vary from a few kilometers down to meter-
scale. Local road weather observations are useful to initial-
ize the road weather model, thus resulting in more accurate
forecasts. The number of deployed road weather stations (at
the test sites) is, however, limited hindering a detailed anal-
ysis of the meteorological conditions along the roads. The
analysis of the meteorological conditions will be performed
either by a data assimilation system incorporated into the
NWP model, or through a high spatial and time resolution
RWS data application in the Internet and in the Android tablet
37 Europe/Rest of the World Vol 9 No 2
CoMoSeF
local analysis scheme that is presently under operational
exploitation at FMI.
The state of the road surface depends on traffic intensity
and volume. At near-surface temperatures slightly below 0C
the tyre friction and the heat flux emanating from the vehicle
can cause surface ice to melt and thus change the slipperi-
ness conditions of the road surface. Therefore, taking into
account the traffic intensity and volume is very important
in the computations of the road surface temperature and
water phase changes. Traffic will be taken into account by
the model in places where such information is available.
Road maintenance actions, such as spreading of reagents
and snow ploughing can substantially alter the state of the
road surface. It would, therefore, be very important to take
into account the road maintenance scheduling and the
resulting actions in order to be able to initialize the model
with proper input data and to produce forecasts with higher
accuracy. Unfortunately, the information on road mainte-
nance actions is typically not available to weather services.
Being available such information could be included in the
model initialization.
The main focus of this work is on the architecture for a
V2V and V2I access network. The architecture is on the path
for demonstration platforms and evaluation. A set of pilot
services focusing on accident warnings and road weather
data reflect the general type of vehicular networking services
employing the platform. The resulting IEEE 802.11p com-
munication architecture with 3G and LTE communication
and embedded services is the major innovation. Even if the
commercial deployment of the architecture remains to be
seen, it introduces a considerable outlook of a hybrid com-
munication design for the operative vehicular networking
environment.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Timo Sukuvaara, Pertti Nurmi, Evgeny Atlaskin, Kari
Menp and Riika Ylitalo all work for the Finnish
Meteorological Institute
firstname.surname@fmi.fi
www.fmi.fi
vision-trafc.ptvgroup.com
PTV Visum Safety enables transport planners
to identify the black spots in the network. Road
accident data ltering and visualisation allow them
to gain an accurate picture of the current situation
on site and take appropriate action. This way, road
users are well protected, in particular those who
are most vulnerable.
PTV Visum Safety provides you with three strong
applications for road safety infrastructure
management:
Black Spot Management (BSM),
Detailed analysis of historical accident data
Network Safety Management (NSM),
Aggregation of safety data
Road Impact Assessment (RIA),
Forecast of safety levels
HOW CAN YOU BRING
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Adv_PTV-VISUM-SAFETY_03-2014_90x240_EN.indd 1 28.05.2014 09:54:44
Analysis... will be performed
either by a data assimilation
system incorporated into the
NWP model, or through a high
spatial and time resolution local
analysis scheme
Delivering short-term road weather information to road users in Arctic
conditions is no simple task as Heikki Konttaniemi, Timo Sukuvaara,
Marjo Hippi, Johan Casselgren and Matti Autioniemi explain
Cold comfort
T
ypical characteristics of Arctic conditions include
very long distances, sparse population and major
temperature and precipitation variations. In these
special and often extreme circumstances all the businesses,
infrastructure and people still need to function safely and
securely.
Currently, the changing climate creates more and more
frequent and extreme weather conditions. In spite of these
facts, the mobility of people and goods in the North will
increase drastically as there is a lot of interest in the Arctics
natural resources. This is especially true in Northern Finland
due to its location in the centre of the Barents region.
In the Arctic Business Forum 2014, the upcoming invest-
ments in the Barents are now estimated to be as much as
155 billion. As the density of traffic increases in special cli-
matic conditions, it is essential for the people and businesses
to have fluent transport and logistics as disruptions mean not
only financial losses but also possible injuries or fatalities. As
an example, tourism is one major industry that is especially
vulnerable to image losses caused by incidents.
CONDITION CRITICAL
According to VTT, in Finland the bad weather conditions
are a factor in 2025 per cent of all road accidents. If the road
users had had greater awareness of road conditions, the acci-
dent risk would be 10 per cent lower. If that awareness was
location-specific, the risk would be decreased as much as by
20 per cent. According to studies done by Tampere Technical
University, the risk of accidents will drastically increase
when the road is snowy, slushy or icy. The risk is five times
bigger when, for example, there is ice and loose snow on the
surface when compared to dry road surfaces. The EU has set
ambitious goals in halving road fatalities by 2020 and mov-
ing towards zero fatalities in the long run. Anticipating and
reacting to road weather and slipperiness will therefore defi-
nitely have a role to play in the big picture, even at EU level.
Modern sensors and communication technologies can
be a hugely effective tool for collecting and transmitting
relevant information from the road. Currently the road
weather and road surface condition information is acquired
through weather forecasts, road weather stations and road
weather cameras. The problem is that especially in areas with
long distances, there are not enough observations available.
However, the latest technological development has enabled
us to gather that information by the use of mobile sensors
attached to vehicles. In the future, the vehicles will com-
municate road condition information centrally to a cloud
or form ad-hoc networks with other vehicles and the infra-
structure to exchange data. The vehicles will detect slipperi-
ness, among other things, enabling the design of new services
based on accurate location-specific data.
Some steps towards this kind of development have
been taken in a Finnish-Swedish Intelligent Road project,
which is implemented in Northern parts of Finland and
Sweden by Lapland University of Applied Sciences, Finnish
Meteorological Institute and Lule Technical University. The
project creates a demonstration system for collecting, com-
municating, and analyzing and visualizing road weather and
road surface condition information.
In the project, there are several frequently travelling heavy
trucks as well as passenger vehicles that are continuously
gathering data on the condition of the road surface but also
on the ambient temperature and humidity. These mobile
road weather stations have integrated data-acquisition
systems designed to collect, process, transmit and receive
real-time data from different sensors and data sources. The
Road weather information
In the future, the vehicles will communicate road condition
information centrally to a cloud or form ad-hoc networks with other
vehicles and the infrastructure to exchange data
Experimental road
weather station: if
awareness of adverse
conditions was location-
specific, the risk of
accidents would be
decreased as much
as by 20 per cent
contains wireless communication systems for IEEE 802.11g
and IEEE 802.11p for communicating with passing vehicles
equipped with compatible systems.
WEATHER OR NOT
On top of the measurements on the road, the meteorologi-
cal forecasts have an important role when forecasting the
road weather. In the future, the observations carried out
automatically by vehicles will have an increasingly impor-
tant role when modelling the road weather and giving local
specific and real-time road weather warnings in the future.
The road weather model predicts what happens on the road
surface due to different weather phenomena. The FMI road
weather model predicts, for example, road surface tempera-
ture, road condition and friction. The length of the road
real-time data is GPS-positioned and time-stamped for
detection of location-specific road surface condition infor-
mation. The in-vehicle systems use optical measurement in
detecting the road surface conditions (icy, slushy, wet, snowy,
dry), friction estimations, and road surface temperature and
water layer thicknesses on the road surface.
As for stationary measurements, there are around 500 road
weather stations around the Finnish main road network,
mostly located in the southern part of Finland. However, the
Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has built a special
experimental road weather station for Sodankyl in Finnish
Lapland in order to create new kind of road weather services.
The idea is to combine data from the station, aerial meteoro-
logical measurements and large- scale meteorological serv-
ices for delivering advanced road user services. The station
Above: Snapshot
from public Intelligent
Road web interface
Left: Snapshot
from the app in
development that will
also be able to give-
real-time information
of the sensors
installed on the vehicle
Intelligent Road facts
Acronym: IR
Aim: To demonstrate
applications of road weather
technologies in a system level
Duration: 20122014
Partners: 3 main research
partners, 6 private financers and
4 national public co-financers
Lead Partner: Lapland
University of Applied Sciences
The Intelligent Road project is
financed partly by EU through the
Interreg IV A Nord programme that
supports interregional cooperation
between Northern regions of
Norway, Finland and Sweden.
Road weather information
weather forecasts are typically from nowcasting (typically 2
to 6 hours) up to several days. The road weather model uses
meteorological observations, road weather station informa-
tion as well as numerical weather prediction as input data.
HOW TO USE THE DATA FOR SERVICES
Both the mobile and stationary measurements, as well as
meteorological data, form a set of data that in the future will
enable the service providers to tailor new services for various
segments of road users.
The role of the Intelligent Road project is to demonstrate
services which are exploiting this data. The public Intelligent
Road web interface features types of data available and places
it on Google Maps layer. FMI has a public web access to the
measurements carried out in their experimental station in
Sodankyl. The web application is accessible through http://
sodrws.fmi.fi. A vehicle passing by the station will receive the
services from the station via in-vehicle computer or a mobile
device.
One way to deliver the information is through navi-
gation apps that warn the driver of slippery conditions
ahead or on the spot. Currently, the Lapland University of
Applied Sciences is developing an app that is not only able to
communicate this information but also gives real-time infor-
mation of the sensors installed in the vehicle.
The main target groups for such applications are regu-
lar road-users, professional transport and winter road
maintenance.
Currently the project consortium is looking to design
and test new large-scale services in close collaboration with
authorities and end-users while involving SMEs comprehen-
sively throughout the value chain.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Heikki Konttaniemi is project manager in Arctic
Power research unit of Lapland University of Applied
Sciences. Timo Sukuvaara and Marjo Hippi are
from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Johan
Casselgren works at Lule Technical University and
Matti Autioniemi represents the Arctic Power unit of
Lapland University of Applied Sciences.
Timo.Sukuvaara@fmi.fi
www.arcticpower.fi
www.intelligentroad.eu
http://sodrws.fmi.fi
Risto Kulmala on improving the duration and
quality of journeys via evaluation and piloting
Efficiency drive
T
he Finnish Transport Agencys (FTA) mission is to
operate the road, rail and maritime transport net-
works of Finland. We aim to carry out the mission
as efficiently as possible. Public sector budgetary restric-
tions result in a need for prioritization, seeking an optimum
between providing the best possible service to the customers
(travelers, companies, authorities, and others) and keeping
within the budgets also in the long term.
The approach chosen by the FTA has been to define levels
of service levels. These levels have been defined to journeys
and transports, as these are the links to our actual customers
as transport network operators. The identified key service
level factors are:
Safety
Travel time
Predictability
Controllability
Availability
Comfort
Accessibility
The idea is that policy and decision makers determine the
minimum and objective service levels, which the FTA and
other involved stakeholders fulfill using their tools and
services. FTA maintains a development-oriented approach,
for which it has a very good track record. Hence, we are
working towards an efficient balance
of development-oriented and service
level approaches.
For ITS, all this means good oppor-
tunities. ITS solutions can remove
transport problems efficiently. In addi-
tion to providing tools for increasing
safety and reducing travel time, they
are especially crucial for some service level factors such as
predictability and controllability. To have the potential ITS
solutions fully utilized, we need to know the impacts and
the benefit/cost of the different ITS solutions under varying
conditions.
BRIDGING THE GAP
In 2013, a comprehensive inventory of the impacts and
benefit/cost of all ITS solutions in road, rail and maritime
transport was carried out. Now we have started to fill in the
identified knowledge gaps in the inventory by commission-
ing evaluation studies. We have started with the ITS solu-
tions that will most likely be deployed in a large scale in the
near future.
FTA is also initiating and supporting a number of pilots.
In addition to providing useful information on the perform-
ance, impacts and socioeconomic feasibility of the ITS solu-
tions, pilots are an important link in the innovation cycle,
FTA
To have the potential solutions
fully utilized, we need to know
the impacts and the benefit/
cost of the different solutions
under varying conditions
where ideas are developed into finished services or products.
Some of the ongoing pilots are described below.
E18 Oslo-St Petersburg corridor
The E18 Oslo-St Petersburg corridor runs through southern
Finland from Turku to the Russian border. It has acted as
a weather-controlled road piloting ground since the 1990s.
Fitsrus, which is a pilot project that involves a multitude
of Finnish and Russian stakeholders, is studying the use of
automated weather services, automated incident detection
and alert system, real-time traffic and travel time infor-
mation service, public transport information service, and
an HTML5-based multi-service platform for travel chain
optimization.
Traffic Lab
Traffic Lab is a pilot that is testing the emergence of a dig-
ital transport service market for consumers by testing new
cooperation and business models in public-private part-
nerships. The aim is to achieve a voluntary instalment of
on-board units to facilitate ITS multiservice use in up to
60,000 vehicles. The FTA and other public sector stakehold-
ers have agreed to purchase such Traffic Lab information
that is required by authority services. For FTA, these serv-
ices include for instance safety-related traffic information as
specified by the EC Delegated Act for ITS Directives priority
action c), incident management, and winter maintenance.
Road surface condition floating vehicle data
The FTA has also initiated the piloting of road surface
condition floating vehicle data, where heavy vehicle fleets
equipped with plug and play devices assess road surface fric-
tion based on vehicle sensor data. Currently two different
systems are being tested and piloted in Finland with very
promising results.
The content and first results of the pilots will be presented
in Helsinki during the ITS Europe Congress in June 2014.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Risto Kulmala is Principal Advisor on ITS at the
Finnish Transport Agency (FTA)
Risto.Kulmala@liikennevirasto.fi
www.liikennevirasto.fi
INTERNATIONAL ROAD DYNAMICS INC.
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IRD_Crown_halfvert_ThinkingHighways_1303.indd 1 3/15/2013 5:47:38 PM
NATIONAL ITS PLANS Malta
Maltas National ITS Coordinator
Peter Paul Barbara offers a
compelling inside view of his
countrys impressively
far-reaching plans to
Kevin Borras
Island of
possibilities
O
ur main task, besides giving advice to
Central Government on forthcoming EU
legislative proposals relating to transport
policy, is to come up with project proposals that will com-
pete for EU funds through the various EU funding pro-
grammes and seek to include Transport Malta as a project
partner in as many projects as possible that fall within
the general transport policy and objectives of Transport
Malta. We believe that participation in such projects
expose Malta to the latest technologies on the market as
well as innovation.
We are of the opinion that this is a way to move for-
ward concurrently with other European States to continue
modernising the transport sector in Malta.
That, in a very convincing nutshell, is Peter Barbaras
raison dtre writ large we may be small, but we have big
ideas, so dont ignore us.
Malta is not the first country that comes to mind
when you think of Europes most innovative ITS nations,
but the publication of its comprehensive National
ITS Implementation Plan together with a National
Electromobility Action Plan earlier this year caused
something of a stir at Thinking Highways HQ. When we
decided to print them out (we are still quite old-school
at times), we half-expected a couple of small pamphlets,
somewhat commensurate with the size of the country
itself, but one editorial colleague remarked that This is
more of a book than a brochure when our printer ran out
of paper for the second time. Barbara and his team can
certainly be congratulated for the length and breadth of
their work but no, environmentalists, we... did not have to
print that email
Malta
The Maltese Governments
policy on ITS and Electromobility
has to be taken in the context of
Maltas unique geographical
specificities coupled with its
national and EU environmental
targets
So what was the main goal that drove Malta, and the con-
tagiously enthusiastic Barbara in particular, to compile such
a far-reaching ITS plan?
The Maltese Governments policy on Intelligent Transport
Systems (ITS) and Electromobility has to be taken in the
context of Maltas unique geographical specificities coupled
with its national and EU environmental targets.
Malta is the smallest EU member state with 416,055
inhabitants and a geographical area of just 316 square kilo-
metres. The population density is extremely high with more
than 1,320 inhabitants per km
2
that is over 10 times the EU
country average. In terms of urban development and infra-
structure, Malta is often referred to as a city state insofar
as nearly 50 per cent of the population lives in the north
and south harbour areas in the conurbation of Valletta.
A National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) conducted
back in 2010 had concluded that 74 per cent of all trips by
members of a household were being undertaken using pri-
vate passenger cars, either as a driver or passenger. This rep-
resents a modal share increase of private cars of more than
5 per cent when compared with the findings of 1998 NHTS
survey. This change in modal share was mainly due to a
modal transfer of trips from public transport and walking.
With approximately 322,960 licensed motor vehicles on
Maltese Roads (as at December 2013) and with numbers still
increasing, Maltas per capita car ownership is one of the larg-
est in the European Union as far as national vehicle fleets are
concerned. Such car concentrations put additional pressures
and challenges on Maltese policy makers to manage such a
fleet on such a small road network. This annual increase in
motor vehicles particularly in recent years has in turn, been
exerting great pressure on Maltas national transport infra-
structure both in terms of the high demand for parking space
and motorist demand for increased road capacity.
Top: Charging point; Left: Renault Twizy on the road; Above: Maltas PORT-PVEV Twizy fleet
Capacity problems and bottlenecks now exist at a number
of critical locations on the 2,350 km of road network, par-
ticularly at major traffic intersections located on the 260 km
main strategic road network, says Barbara. During the last
few years, traffic bottlenecks spread from the traditional peak
hours normally associated with morning and evening com-
muting into other hours of the day and night. While many of
the bottlenecks have been alleviated through recent invest-
ment in the upgrade of parts of the strategic road network,
the high level of urbanisation and environmental constraints
at certain critical sections prove to be an insurmountable
barrier to the provision of new road links or widening of
existing infrastructure.
A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE
Inevitably this situation is negatively affecting the state of
Maltas Air Quality levels, where transportation is the main
source and contributor to the rise in PM
10
and NO
2
levels.
In addition to that, Barbara explains, the rise in the
number of ICE vehicles is also negatively contributing to
Maltas Greenhouse Gas Emission 2020 targets mandated
to Malta under the European Union Climate Change and
Energy Package, through the burning of more carbon based
fuels. The pressure on the Maltese Authorities is set to
increase as both the Air Quality Framework Directive and
both the Climate Change and Energy targets are to become
more stringent in the long term.
In a country where the car-culture is spread across the pop-
ulation, addressing these problems is something of a mam-
moth task. Since 2011, the Government had been addressing
the public transport sector by overhauling the public trans-
port system leading to a new bus transport system, a new
public transport operator and a new bus fleet made up of
cleaner and fully accessible EURO V buses to entice private
car users to switch the public transport.
This, however, didnt entirely alleviate the problem.
Although public transport patronage increased considerably
since the start of the new revamped public transport opera-
tions started, the problem with traffic congestion continued
to increase, a fact attributed to the fact the Maltese economy
was growing and that people needed to travel more.
In this respect the Maltese Government through the
Ministry for Transport and Infrastructure and Transport
Malta which is the National Transport Authority and transport
Regulator, the public transport system is being continually
improved, with an enlarged bus fleet and the introduction of
additional bus routes to increase accessibility and address the
demand from the public. To alleviate road traffic congestion,
over the coming few years, the Government will increase its
support for maritime inter-harbour ferry services to enhance a
modal split between the different mode of transport.
In addition to these measures the Maltese Government is
currently looking at other innovative services and solutions
Maltas per capita car ownership is one of the largest in the
EU which puts additional pressures and challenges on policy
makers to manage such a fleet on such a small road network
Malta
that could be implemented to make public transport more
sustainable and environmentally friendly. The Government
has also recently embarked on additional robust and chal-
lenging actions specifically relating to the deployment of
Intelligent Transport Systems and Electromobility, which is
the subject of a separate article in Issue 2 of Thinking Cities
magazine. Two National Action Plans have so far been pub-
lished, each containing specific projects and measures against
a set time frame during which they will be implemented.
Says Barbara: The ITS Action Plan also follows the
Intelligent Transport Systems European Framework
Directive, so answering your question, the reason for the
drive to go down this route was two-fold, the urgent need to
address traffic congestion and secondly to follow the other
EU Member States with respect to interoperable ITS deploy-
ment. On the other hand, the formulation and publishing of
the Malta National Electromobility Action Plan was mostly
driven by various factors, notably to address the need to
improve national air quality levels and to address Maltas
national Climate Change and Energy 2020 targets.
START AS YOU MEAN TO GO ON
As a relative newcomer to the world of Intelligent Transport
Systems (ITS), the next two years will see Malta rolling out
ITS at a national level. For a small island state the planned
deployment of ITS is going to be substantial, both in terms
of the impact on the transport system and in terms of invest-
ment that has been earmarked for urban traffic management
and control. With all this new technology making its way
onto Maltas roads and into the consciousness of its populace,
it seemed like a good time to ask how much of it is homeg-
rown and how much is imported? With all respect to Maltese
companies have been seldom present in the exhibition halls
of the ITS Europe and ITS World Congresses.
Barbara, fortunately, takes my question in the manner in
which it was meant. Much of the ITS technologies being
currently deployed is imported from abroad or through local
agents. Purchasing of such equipment and related solutions
are procured through the respective procurement rules of
the Government. I would say that at the moment there are
a number of companies employed in ITS-related products
and solutions. I do not think it is prudent to single out spe-
cific companies, but what I can say is that there is scope for
a niche market here. I am pleased that local companies are
making themselves felt in the international market, he con-
tinues. We hope that there will be more companies investing
both in ITS as well as in the electromobility sectors. If there
is increased interest from the private sector, Government
may consider in the future the setting up of an electromobil-
ity and ITS innovation hub, where companies can carry out
R&D activities in Malta and use it as a test-bed for future
innovative solutions.
The formulation and publishing of the Malta National Electromobility
Action Plan was mostly driven by various factors, notably to address
the need to improve national air quality levels and to address Maltas
national Climate Change and Energy 2020 targets
Maltas National ITS Coordinator
Peter Paul Barbara
Maltas population density
is extremely high and there
is an urgent need to address
traffic congestion
A UNIQUE EQUATION
Sometimes, as a journalist, you find yourself asking a ques-
tion that you had told yourself not to ask but somehow you
asked it anyway. The interview is going well, you and the
interviewee are getting on fine so you relax a bit and your
guard slips. The next inquiry I put to Peter Paul Barbara was
just that question. I knew the answer already but heard myself
say it. So, do you look to other countries of a similar size for
inspiration, in terms of technology and implementation?
No not really. As I said earlier, Malta has unique geo-
graphic specificities. When I say geographic I mean both in
terms of physical topographic characteristics, weather con-
ditions, urban and spatial characteristics, land restriction
as well as how people live their life in general. All has to be
taken in the same context and one cannot leave anything out
of the equation.
I say it is a unique ecosystem. I dont think that there is
another European country of the same size with same kind
of population. Luxembourg for example has a very small
population comparable to Malta but then its land mass is
huge compared to ours. You live in London your city is
approximately 1,572 km
2
in area. Maltas is 316 km
2
.We can-
not apply to Malta what other countries do. Even as far as
governance and the administration of the country are carried
out. For example, local governments in Malta operate very
differently from other European countries, where each city
has its own transport policy specifically for that city. In Malta
this approach doesnt make sense. It doesnt make sense that
each local government would have their own local transport
policy. All policy issues concerning all of the economic sec-
tors and respective activities are conducted in top-to-bottom
approach. However, that said we do take note of the tech-
nologies that are available on the market and we adapt these
to suit our needs and specific circumstances.
POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH
The fact that we do not have as yet a fully fledged Intelligent
Traffic Management and Traffic Monitoring System, gives us
the opportunity to build everything new from the ground up
without the need to upgrade existing or ageing equipment,
explains the ebullient Barbara. Hence the current and
future investments that are earmarked for ITS deployment,
is intended to put in place the foundations for Maltas future
National ITS network.
We are doing this in accordance with the latest indus-
try standards as well as in line with the EU-ITS Framework
Directive as well as the EASYWAY Guidelines. At this stage
we are at a point where the projects offered are being evalu-
ated and it is expected that installation works will start over
the coming few months.
Barbara maintains that traffic management, especially
the management of congestion, is a challenge everywhere,
regardless of whether it is a city or an island, but I was still
keen to know what measures are taken to overcome the geo-
graphical and spatial limitations that must surely compound
the problems.
In the case of the Maltese islands, thats Malta and Gozo,
urbanisation is rapidly eating away from the geographical
boundaries that in the past separated a town from a village
or a village from another village. In my opinion, Malta is
taking the shape of a one large cosmopolitan city. The differ-
ence lies in the respective topography of Malta when com-
pared to that of a planned city. At this point in time, Malta
is made up of a number of conurbations that by time will
continue to expand and merge together into one continuous
urban area. Even as a capital city Valletta is not really com-
parable to any other major cities like Paris, London, Rome
or Tokyo that are regarded as financial centres in their own
right. These cities, all have their own specific Historical
City Centre from where the city grew outwards into one
large urban agglomeration. In the distant future, Valletta
may also end up as the Old Historical City Centre within a
large urban agglomeration Malta.
On several occasions, transport consultants contracted by
the Maltese authorities have offered traffic related solutions
that are already in place in a number of major European
Cities but which were entirely unsuitable for Malta. Such
solutions do not really work as every geographical area has
its own particularities and specificities, and hence generic
Mitsubishi i-MIEVE: compact, electric vehicles are ideal
for these narrow roads and out-of-town driving alike
Malta
The first phase started in 2013
and will continue through 2017
while the second phase will be
carried out from 2018 to 2020
solutions do not really make any sense in a country the size
and shape of Malta.
It is for the same reason we do not have a bicycle cul-
ture as in, for example, the Netherlands. This is because the
Maltese hilly topography and extreme climate conditions
across the different seasons make it almost impossible to
adopt the same culture. Anyone who has visited Malta will
know the reasons for this! The main challenges arise because
space is limited. We cant do anything about that but what we
can do is introduce technologies to try and make our trans-
port system more efficient, and that is how we intend to face
those challenges.
NO LET UP
Barbara was kind enough to give me a few hours of his time
but I was conscious of taking up too much of it as his diary
was already overflowing with appointments. He certainly
isnt short of things to do.
No, far from it! Right now I am fully immersed in pipeline
project preparations. My overall responsibility is to implement
the Malta National Electromobility Action Plan. This is a major
challenge for us. We have planned deployment year by year
and we cannot afford to miss these self-imposed deadlines.
Another important project we will be working on in the future
is the planning of the second phase of ITS Deployment that
will be done in conjunction with the Directorate responsible
for traffic management set up recently within Transport Malta.
The National Intelligent Transport System (ITS) Action Plan is
a synthesis of how Transport Malta intends to roll out Maltas
first major ITS deployment which is split in two phases and
spanning an eight-year timeframe. The first phase has already
started in 2013 and will continue through 2017 while the sec-
ond phase will be carried out in the following three years, from
2018 to 2020.
Maltas ITS Action Plan has been developed within the
framework of the six main priority areas split into a number
of actions contained in Directive 2010/40/EU that will be
carried out over a seven-year timeframe.
Through this deployment and because of the small and
manageable size of the transport network, Malta will be one
of the first European countries to have all of its main road
network, transport hubs and termini seamlessly connected
in real-time at a national level, says Barbara proudly. The
roll-out of ITS at the national level in the first phase will gen-
erate vast quantities of raw travel and traffic data that can
be filtered and structured to provide a vital monitoring and
assessment tool for transport planners and operators, emer-
gency services, policy makers and control bodies.
Initial preparations are already underway for the second
phase of the ITS Action Plan that envisages further enhance-
ments and additions to Phase 1 as well as its extension to
Maltas urban core areas.
The main aims of Phase 2 will be to further improve pub-
lic transport efficiency, road safety and air quality. Transport
Malta shall carry out a mid-term review of this Action Plan
towards the last quarter of 2015 to assess the results achieved
during Phase 1 of deployment, concludes Barbara before
thanking Thinking Highways for our interest and hurrying
off to his next appointment.
The sheer scale of both the National Electromobility
Action Plan and the National ITS Implementation Plan is
quite clearly not just a marketing tool. Small island, big ideas
indeed
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Peter Paul Barbara is National Coordinator of the
Malta National Electromobility Platform and Intelligent
Transport Systems
peter.p.barbara@transport.gov.mt
http://www.transport.gov.mt/
Part of the PORT PVEV Project: new BMWi3 at
Muscats showroom
TELEMATICS Asset tracking
Since the fall of the Soviet Union,
we have become used to
widespread reports of highway
robberies, vehicle and cargo theft,
but is it really that bad? Not any
more, says Semyon Fokin, General
Manager of Cesar Satellites
Automotive Division, but there is
still a lot of work to do, as he told
Julia Nelepa
An inherent deterrent
I
ts fair to say that Russia has featured rather prominently
in the news of late, but one thing that has not changed is
its emerging status as an economic and political power-
house. Russia is huge and the state of its road infrastructure,
although improved in recent years, still lags behind most of
Europe. Highways are long, narrow and, for the most part,
poorly repaired. Services and police outposts outside of
major cities are scarce. [but technology is helping in the fight
against crime on Russias highways????]
Russia has become a high-volume destination for
imported goods, much of which comes in by road from
Western Europe. Yet, fears are that crime is rampant and
police is inefficient. How bad is it in reality?
As you know, Russia is a country with a European outlook,
but an Asian mentality. There are, obviously, some unique
factors: huge distances between cities, rather low density of
population, fast market growth and, at the same time, rela-
tively high volatility. There is a significant income inequal-
ity, as well, and living standards differ a lot from region to
region. Overall, this unstable economic and social environ-
ment, unfortunately, provokes crime. Meanwhile, emergency
response outside of major cities can be quite problematic
the structure of the police forces is rather complex and
decentralized, and its efficiency and resources vary greatly
from region to region. Interaction between different regional
police forces is sometimes quite complicated. For a driver in
distress, it is often very difficult to determine which number
to call for help, and how to reach the nearest police station
using their mobile phone. As a result of all this, it is, unfortu-
nately, quite easy to commit a crime on the road somewhere,
and no one will be able to come to the victims rescue in time.
Therefore, the issue of cargo theft is a huge topic in Russia.
Vehicles from Cesar Satellites own security agency patrol the streets of
Moscow, St Petersburg and along the major transport routes in Russia
Is it primarily theft or are we talking about violent road
crime that has been widely reported in the global press t
since the early post-Soviet years in Russia?
It is much more often theft, than robbery or any type of
violent crime. Contrary to perception, violent crime on
the roads in Russia is very rare which, I think, has a lot
to do with our laws. Penalties for any crime involving vio-
lence, such as robbery or hijacking, are much higher than
for pure property crime. Theft, at the same time, is quite easy
to commit and get away with. Cargo theft, specifically, is a
low priority for law enforcement. It is not a politically viable
Asset tracking
issue that concerns the public too much, and it tends to affect
mostly medium-sized and large businesses, which arent par-
ticularly in favour in Russia nowadays.
So, what are the major weak points for cargo theft?
Breakdowns, rest stops?
Lunch breaks and overnight stops, for sure the cargo could
be offloaded, or the entire vehicle can be stolen while the
driver is away. Surprisingly though, this isnt all theft from
a moving vehicle is quite widespread as well. There was even
a movie about this recently on the Russian TV: a car attaches
itself to a moving truck, at the same time as another over-
takes it, distracting the driver. The doors are opened, and
several packages of goods are offloaded into the car through
a windshield that is dismantled. It then detaches and leaves,
and the driver often does not realize what has happened,
until he arrives at destination. This often happens with ciga-
rette shipments for example and in fact cigarettes are most
often stolen this way and direct loss from a single incident
may be up to 100,000. There is also a compound indirect
loss that is a result of stolen cigarettes of certain brand flood-
ing some regional markets at highly discounted prices. Local
consumers are subsequently less willing to pay the full price
for legally imported and taxed cigarettes of the same brand.
Competition from trade in stolen tobacco drives overall
prices, and profits, down.
In a scenario like this, as you say, the driver doesnt even
notice that anything is happening, so a panic button,
which is a standard feature in fleet management systems,
will not be of any use. How can we address this?
Currently, there are several theft prevention methods avail-
able on the market and we are providing all of them. First,
and the most expensive one, is a security escort. Its very sim-
ple you hire a vehicle with armed guards, who are escort-
ing your truck, or a convoy of several trucks. It is then very
unlikely that something would happen, and is also effective
against any hypothetical fraud scenario involving the driver.
Second and a bit less expensive is to hire an armed guard
who will travel in-cabin with the driver this can be a private
guard or an agent from local police security force. It is also
quite efficient but may not, for instance, help against theft
from a moving vehicle as described earlier the guards view
will be just as obstructed as the drivers. Additionally, there is
a potential for human error for instance, the driver and the
guard going to lunch together, leaving the vehicle or cargo
open to theft.
The third method is a telematics fleet management system
with a panic button. The driver can detect that something
is happening with the vehicle and react. The major disad-
vantage though, is that basic service offered by almost all
fleet management providers does not include guaranteed
response time. In most areas of Russia, emergency signals
from panic buttons and sensors that are set off on a basic fleet
monitoring system, will be referred to local police forces,
where timing or efficiency of response varies by region, and
depends greatly on the location of the incident. There is a
risk that, by the time the help comes, everything could be
stolen already.
And to what extent can we rely on the Russian police force?
We hear a lot in the news about allegations of corruption,
and local forces that are sometimes less equipped than the
criminals they are trying to apprehend.
Firstly, of course, this situation is changing and not only
in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also all over Russia.
Secondly, we are not talking about very sophisticated types of
crime, nor the sort of criminals that ride around in Porsche
Cayennes. These are regular criminals in average unremark-
able vehicles, committing relatively low-risk, from their per-
spective, crimes.
However to guarantee efficient police response you need
to have relevant experience and established cooperation with
them. We as Cesar Satellite have a very good track record
cooperating with police forces all over the country, since
we have been doing it for over 15 years in relation to our
vehicle theft services. Currently we have more that 150 coop-
eration agreements with various police and state emergency
response bodies all over Russia. From the police standpoint,
working with us is very efficient, because we use our tracking
systems to help them catch the thieves. Thanks to us, they
can close more cases, improve their crime solving statistics
and receive promotions and commendations. So when we
call and say that there is an emergency ongoing and we need
help, they will send their best people immediately, because
they know that in the end, it is likely to be beneficial for
Emergency response outside of
major cities can be quite
problematic ... efficiency and
resources vary greatly from
region to region
Semyon Fokin, General
Manager of Cesar Satellites
Automotive Division
TELEMATICS Asset tracking
We use our own crews, as well
as our existing partners in the
home alarm service that are
included in the network. That
allows us to provide total
coverage for several major
routes
them. And by the way we are not calling them any more
a couple of years ago we have completed M2M integration
with the Police and Ambulance vehicle dispatching systems
so now we send incident cards to them automatically from
our monitoring software.
However, in order to guarantee an efficient and timely
response we still need to have a network of our own vehicles
and our local partners crews, so that when something hap-
pens we always have a security crew nearby that will respond
to the incident. Therefore we run our own security agency,
which currently employs about 200 people in more than 60
response crews, mostly in Moscow, St. Petersburg and along
the major transport routs. Also we cooperate with more than
600 security agencies in all regions of Russia that provide
their vehicles upon our request.
All methods that you mentioned so far are quite tradi-
tional. Are there any new technologies for cargo security?
Absolutely. Last year we started rolling out a service that we
call a secure transport corridor. For this service, we devel-
oped an infrastructure of emergency response crews along-
side the particular roads, so that we can guarantee response
time of no more than 15-20 minutes, no matter whether an
emergency happens 50km or 500km from Moscow. This
setup provides the same efficiency as security escort but pro-
vides significant economy to the truck owner.
But it must surely require a lot of people and resources
Our experience shows that for that you need to have a crew
every 30-50km. We use our own crews, as well as our existing
partners in the home alarm service that are included in the
network. That allows us to provide total coverage for several
major routes. The first route where we started offering this
service was the road between Moscow and St. Petersburg,
and further North to the Finnish border, starting at any of
the three major crossings between Russia and Finland. The
secure transport corridor is like an improved telematics
service, where there is system installed in the vehicle, but
there are also battery-powered trackers than can be embed-
ded directly in the goods, to control not only where the vehi-
cle is, but where the goods are. That way, even if the vehicle is
on track and the driver hasnt noticed anything, we can see if
the goods are getting off course, and this will also trigger the
guaranteed emergency response.
This would only make financial sense for you, if there was
a certain amount of subscribers, though, wouldnt it?
Its more a case of a certain amount of deliveries per month
actually. Of course, in order to guarantee the advertised
response time, we have to maintain all of this integrated
structure, including our own crews, our partner crews, coop-
eration with police in certain regions and so on. We need to
invest in this service on a monthly basis in order to continu-
ously maintain it on developed routes.
However, in a major transport corridor such as this, there
is a sufficient demand to provide this service, and it turns out
very cost effective. Security on a shipment along this secure
transport corridor can cost the shipper 30-50 per cent less
compared to other methods currently used on high-value
shipments, e.g. security convoys and armed guards. We have
just rolled out the same service on another major route from
Western Europe: from Poland via Belorussia to Moscow.
Asset tracking
But Belarus is a different country with its own specific
circumstances.
Indeed it is. For instance, operation of private security serv-
ices is not allowed in Belarus under local law, so on their ter-
ritory, we have to rely on local police forces. It must be noted
though, that Belarus today is much more like the old Soviet
Union the police have much better control over their terri-
tory. In Belarus, however, the only types of service available
for cargo shipments from the local police will be security
guards and armed escorts. The other types of service will
start at the border with Russia.
You have so far targeted two main corridors into Western
Europe, which is understandable yet, cargo security and
emergency response time is surely as big a problem else-
where in Russia as well?
Most imported goods come into Russia along one of those
two routes, and most go directly to Moscow, where the
majority of large companies have their main distribution
centers. So, at first this service targeted mostly large import-
ers, who already used to similar services being offered else-
where in Europe. The problem most certainly does not end
there, though. The goods are sold to local distributors or
re-distributed for further transportation to smaller carri-
ers that take them in all directions and in a variety of ways
and vehicles, and they remain just as susceptible to theft. We
are developing two other major destinations for the same
service, roads from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don, and from
Moscow to Ekaterinburg.
Finally, a lot of vehicles on which goods come into Russia
from Europe will already have some telematics equipment
installed so subsequently there may be a lot of people
coming in with devices by different manufacturers, is this
a problem?
We do provide our own equipment as needed, but pre-
installed systems are not an issue, either. Our monitoring
system can integrate any sort of data exchange protocol, and
we can monitor all kinds of pre-installed devices.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Semyon Fokin is General Manager of the Automotive
Division of Cesar Satellite
semen.fokin@cesarsatellite.ru
www.csat.ru
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Level Crossings & Red Light Enforcement
Yellow Box Violations
Tolling
Journey Time Measurement
Access Control & Parking Management
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of reading any international plate
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Solutions to improve roads, journeys and communities
45XXX Vysionics Thinking Highways Ad A:Layout 1 27/05/2014 10:39 Page 1
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT Gamification
PleaseCycles approach to getting more of us
traveling sustainably more often, explained by
Crispin Moller and Greg Drach
Were all gamers
Over one hundred years ago, Cracker Jack started to place
a toy in every box of their breakfast cereals to reward chil-
dren for eating more of their product. Since then, countless
businesses have been using games, toys and other kinds of
fun as a means of selling and promoting their products.
Moving this notion into the 21st century, gamification has
become the use of game elements and game-design tech-
niques in non-game contexts.
The term gamification went mainstream in 2010 thanks
to a now famous talk by game designers Jesse Schell and Jane
McGonigal. Since the TED Talk focusing on the use of game
mechanics in non-game contexts the gamification industry
has become significant with a huge number of companies
adopting gamification as a means of increasing engagement
to suit their varying needs.
S
ustainable travel is something that is on the rise.
Transport for London reported an 8 per cent growth
in cycling during 2010 which is the equivalent of an
additional 45,000 journeys on top of the half million plus
journeys being made by bike each day.
With the percentage of people in the UK also reporting to
walk for at least 10 minutes continuously once a week being
around 90 per cent of the population, why is it proving so
hard to get people out of their cars? With 24m journeys being
made in London, not to mention similar cities around the
world each day, how can we get more people to think more
about their travel methods?
Step up PleaseCycle. Simply put PleaseCycle help get more
people running, walking and cycling more often.
PleaseCycle help organizations and local authorities engage
with their audiences by targeting a number of key areas in
behavioral change, a key factor in encouraging more people
to make the switch to more sustainable travel methods.
Providing branded online and mobile portals allowing
users to track their journeys, see what CO
2
their sustainable
journeys have saved compared to driving and how much
money sustainable travel can save them PleaseCycle aim to
help people understand the impact their travel has on the
wider environment. In turn this allows organizations and
local authorities to specifically report on the reduced impact
their employees or residents have on the wider area, provid-
ing key corporate and social responsibility statistics.
WHAT IS GAMIFICATION?
Providing methods of encouragement and thus getting peo-
ple to think about how they travel is the first step on the road
to getting them out of their car, but how does that involve
gamification and where did it all start? How can we get people to think more about their travel methods?
Gamification
It is important to remember that real people use these systems. It
sounds obvious, but it is easily overlooked and hard to rectify
WHAT CAN GAMIFICATION BE USED FOR?
According to Buck Consultants, over two-thirds of employ-
ers consider gamification an effective strategy for encourag-
ing their employees to improve their health and more than
30 per cent of employers intend to adopt a minimum of one
health-focused gamified strategy in the next year.
According to M2Research, the market for enterprise gami-
fication solutions grew in 2012 by 38 per cent and is pro-
jected to be worth US$2.8bn in 2016 and US$5.5bn in 2018,
compared to US$421m in 2012.
The prominence of this market has seen a huge influx of
gamification in a wide variety of companies such as Nike,
Coca-Cola, Kelloggs, McDonalds, Microsoft to name a few.
The particular branch of gamification PleaseCycle use
is called behaviour-change gamification that seeks to form
beneficial new habits among a targeted audience. Behaviour-
change gamification can involve anything from encouraging
people to make better health choices, such as eating better or
working out more often, to building systems that help people
save more money for retirement. Generally, these new hab-
its produce desirable societal outcomes: less obesity, lower
medical expenses, a more effective educational system, and
better financial decisions.
PleaseCycle provides a tool targeted to get more people to
cycle and increase cycling frequency among casual cyclists.
HOW DO PLEASECYCLE IMPLEMENT
GAMIFICATION?
The successful implementation of gamification requires a
number of key objectives to be outlined in order to target the
desired behavioural change.
Step 1: Define main objectives
PleaseCycles main objective is to get more people cycling
more often.
Step 2: Delineate target behaviors
It is important to focus on the desired behavioral change in
order to put in the correct means of measurement in place.
Since behaviors and metrics are best considered together,
PleaseCycles target behaviors are concrete and specific.
Some of the examples include:
- Sign up for an account on the website
- Log cycling trips at least once a week
- Create a goal
- Take part in a cycling competition
- Form or join a team
- Share your experiences on Facebook or Twitter
Step 3: Describe the users
It is important to remember that real people use these sys-
tems. It sounds obvious, but it is easily overlooked and some-
thing that it is very hard to rectify. Its important to know
who the users are and anticipate and understand what their
needs are and will be moving forward. It is important that
the information captured is carefully analysed to provide the
most relevant experience to users throughout the lifecycle of
the product.
Step 4: Devise Activity/Engagement Cycles
There are two kinds of activity cycle used on the PleaseCycle
platform: engagement loops and progression stairs.
Engagement loops describe, at micro level, what users
do, why they do it, and what the system does in response.
Progression stairs give a macro perspective on the players
journey. Its important to get these cycles right as getting
them wrong means you risk undoing any behavioral change
already achieved and potentially loosing the interest of the
user fulltime.

Activity Cycle:
Progression Stairs:
Motivation
Action Feedback
Levels
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT Gamification
Step 5: Dont forget the fun
Before a gamification solution is implemented it is important
to take a step back and as a simple question: is it fun? Fun
isnt easy to predict, but the best way to tell if the system is
fun is to build it, test it and refine it though a rigorous design
systems. PleaseCycle have gone through a number of phases
in order to produce products that work for the specific audi-
ences they are asked to cater for.
Step 6: Deploy the Appropriate Tools
The last stage is to pick the appropriate game mechanics,
components and elements and deliver them through an
effective mechanism. PleaseCycle are very careful about
which elements are selected, constantly bearing in mind that
the user experience should be fun and motivating to encour-
age increased usage. It is as refined balance of various ele-
ments that helps create a successful system.
DOES IT REALLY WORK?
PleaseCycle have based their latest product variation on a
variety of different applied theories, putting them to the test
in a couple of notable case studies which we will explore later
in the article.
Firstly the science:
The Fogg Behaviour Model developed in 2011 by B.J. Fogg
indicates that behaviour change occurs once triggered only
when motivation levels are high and/or when users ability to
complete a task is increased.
Self-Determination Theory developed by Edward Deci,
Richard Ryan and their collaborators suggests that human
beings are inherently proactive, with a strong internal desire
for growth, but their external environment must support
this, otherwise these internal motivators will be thwarted.
SDT indicates that these needs fall into three categories:
competence, relatedness, and autonomy.
- Competence, or mastery, means being effective in deal-
ing with the external environment: learning how to cycle,
route planning, preparing appropriate clothing.
- Relatedness involves social connection and the universal
desire to interact with and be involved with family, friends,
colleagues and others.
- Autonomy is the innate need to feel in command of ones
life and to be doing what is meaningful (getting healthier,
reducing the impact on the environment, saving money).
According to the theory, tasks that implicate one or more of
these innate human needs tend to be intrinsically motivated.
In other words, people will do them for their own sake. It is
our job to boost these motivators and make them easier to
feel and achieve.
The Tools
- Increase motivation: PleaseCycle have used a number of
gamification tools such as: badges, goal setting, tracking
cycling progress, leader boards and friendly competition
with colleagues.
- The ability to share achievements: Links with Facebook
and Twitter encourage teams through social interaction
- Reward: Discounts in local shops and restaurants based on
your BikeMiles are also very powerful extrinsic motivators
- Inform: PleaseCycle provide a lot of information on how
to get started and prepare for cycling e.g. what bike and
what clothing.
- The Weather Widget and Journey Planner make route
planning easy and fun.
- Triggers: we use a number of triggers such as nudge
emails; competitions and challenges to stimulate the desir-
able behaviour change.
Self-Determination Theory this theory developed by
Edward Deci, Richard Ryan and their collaborators sug-
gests that human beings are inherently proactive, with
a strong internal desire for growth, but that the external
Gamification has proved
hugely influential when it
comes to peoples buying
habits
Gamification
go:cycling One Month Case Study
REFERENCES
The authors used the following resources to write this article
- Video lectures from Coursera massive open
online course (MOOC) Gamification
- For the Win by Kevin Werbach
- BJ Foggs Behaviour Model: http://
www.behaviormodel.org/
- Self-Determination Theory: http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Self-determination_theory
- Market statistics:
http://www.buckconsultants.com/
http://www.biworldwide.com/
http://www.m2research.com/gamification-2012.htm
go:cycling is a local authority initiative based in Leeds
for the West Yorkshire area. They have been tasked
with getting more people cycling as both a means
of being healthier and as a means of travel, relieving
congestion within the City are surrounding area.
PleaseCycle carried out a one-month challenge in conjunction
with go:cycling as a focal point of action, drawing on Foggs
behaviour change theory and providing impetus for people to
try cycling. They enjoyed a high participation rate during the
challenge as well as following it, utilising the self-determination
theory and PleaseCycles various intrinsic tools following the
challenge. As post challenge survey revealed the following:
o Relatedness involves social connection and the uni-
versal desire to interact with and be involved with fam-
ily, friends, colleagues and others.
o Autonomy is the innate need to feel in command of
ones life and to be doing what is meaningful (getting
healthier, reducing the impact on the environment,
saving money).
According to the theory, tasks that implicate one or more of
these innate human needs tend to be intrinsically motivated.
In other words, people will do them for their own sake. It is
our job to boost these motivators and make them easier to
feel and achieve.
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of this article we posed a question. How can
we get more people to think about their means of travel and
instigate a behavioural change thus benefiting themselves
and others?
Gamification has proved hugely influential when it comes
to peoples buying habits. The volume of investment going
into the sector is a clear indication that the appetite both in
terms of consumers and suppliers/employers/authorities is
growing. With peoples travel habits beginning to shift gami-
fication shows signs of being a key method of assisting the
change and seeing that it is not simply a phase and is a key
long term progression.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greg Drach is business development director and
Crispin Moller is account director at PleaseCycle
crispin@pleasecycle.com
greg@pleasecycle.com
www.pleasecycle.com
If you are interested in implementing PleaseCycle in
your organisation or municipality, please dont hesitate
to get in touch at: highways@pleasecycle.com
environment must support this, otherwise these inter-
nal motivators will be thwarted. STD indicates that these
needs fall into three categories: competence, relatedness,
and autonomy.
o Competence, or mastery, means being effective in
dealing with the external environment: learning how to
cycle, route planning, preparing appropriate clothing.
ROAD SAFETY Tunnel safety
T
he social role of roads is undeniable. Roads service
citizens by connecting people with hospitals, schools
and workplaces. For this very reason, roads must be
not only efficient, but also safe.
The IR2B Strategic Research Agenda highlights the impor-
tance of this topic and calls for innovation on road safety solu-
tions and advanced road equipment. In particular, priority 47
of the IR2B Agenda proposes undertaking research and inno-
vation efforts in the field of fire-resistant road surfaces for
high-risk areas.
Tunnels represent one of the features of the road network
where safety concerns become more important. Road tunnels
hold unique characteristics and deserve special attention, even
if accidents do not occur more often in tunnels than in other
points of the road network. However, any serious incident
involving them causes great social alarm, given 1) the actual
difficulties posed to rescue or evacuation interventions, 2) the
drama caused to drivers due to the closed configuration of a
tunnel and 3) the serious disruption which may involve the
temporary closure of a road, mainly when there are difficult or
non-existent alternatives to detour traffic.
Some recent fires in European tunnels have stressed the need
to adopt efficient measures in order to minimize risks for both
people and the infrastructure itself, as shown in table 1.
In this context, materials and computer simulation become
essential tools to develop innovative safety solutions to improve
safety conditions in road tunnels.
PAVEMENT BEHAVIOUR IN CASE OF FIRE
Due to the high risk of fire, it is mandatory to ensure that
all materials used during the construction stage of a tunnel
provide the highest safety level. In this sense, the pavement
of the carriageway represents an important part of the cross
section in a road tunnel. The presence of combustible mate-
rials in the pavement can result into significant distress in
case of fire, as they would contribute to increasing the fire
load, emitting toxic fumes and destroying the structural
properties of the referred element, therefore making evacua-
tion operations more difficult.
Nonetheless, the main risk involved in the presence of a
combustible material in pavements is the change induced in
fire dynamics.
It must be noted that, when a temperature of 485C is
reached, asphalt burns. Despite the fact that asphalt combus-
tion generates a low amount of heat, the truth is that such
heat is produced in the lower part of the vehicle, changing fire
dynamics and speeding it up. This heat generation in the lower
part of the tunnel makes the fire widespread and causes a sud-
den and dramatic increase of power see figure 1. Speeding up
the fire brings then a significant increase of smoke, in addition
to the fumes generated by the combustion of the pavement. As
a result of this, once the pavement starts burning, conditions
around the fire will worsen quickly, preventing firemen from
working under safety conditions.
In case the power exceeds 50 MW, fire could also spread to
other vehicles. This effect may trap firemen between two fires,
since intervention teams have to be as close as 20 meters from
the original fire, so as to put it out and new fires can be set
behind them. Avoiding this sudden increase of power caused
by the combustion of asphalt pavements is essential to guaran-
tee the safety of fire fighters.
Last but not least, this combustion in the lower part of the
Hard facts
Csar Bartolom discuss the role of the concrete
pavement in improving fire safety in road tunnels
Table 1: Summary of recent fires in European road tunnels
Tunnel safety
the 8% of total energy fire and it should not significantly worsen
working conditions. However, the fact is that fire dynamics are
often changing and emission rates drastically increase after the
asphalt starts burning.
Figure 3 shows the difference between both types of com-
bustion processes, depending on the type of pavement.
Concrete pavements (non-flammable), thanks to their inert
behaviour, have the advantage of acting as heat accumulators,
and their stability under high temperatures allow intervention
teams to access the tunnel.
CONCLUSIONS
This author believes that the rules regulating in some
European countries the use of concrete pavements in tun-
nels whose length is over 500m (Austria) or 1000m (Spain)
are therefore well-founded. The amount of fumes and heat
released by burning asphalt surfaces is comparable to that
produced by the combustion of a truck. The heat energy that
asphalt surfaces may release, generated in the low part of the
tunnel, can change the dynamics of the fire, leading to an
increase of its intensity. Consequently, the fire could easily
spread to other vehicles through the pavement. Additionally,
the increase in firepower could mean that the design load
of ventilation systems was exceeded, making the fire harder
to fight and resulting in a higher risk for people and for the
structure.
This unfortunate effect took place in some fires that occurred
inside tunnels at the end of the 1990s in Austria, France and
Italy, and they all resulted into tragedies. When fume extractors
are insufficient to eliminate fire gases, heat accumulates inside
the tunnel causing other vehicles to catch fire and larger asphalt
surfaces to burn. The authors proposal is that any element that
contributes to make the situation worse should be eliminated
or minimised.
In some extreme cases, the use of concrete pavements may
be the key factor that allows keeping the amount of heat and
gases below the standard design limits, so that the extraction
system keeps working until the situation is under control.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Csar Bartolom is Director for Innovation
at the Spanish Institute for Cement and
its Applications, IECA and Chairman of the
Smart & Green Road Construction and
Operation Programme at the International
Road Research Board, IR2B
www.ir2b.org
This article is a summary of a wider study, elaborated
by Spanish Technical Association of Firemen, which
will be presented next September in the forthcoming
12th Symposium on Concrete Roads in Prague
(2326 September 2014)
Figure 1: Sudden increase of power due to a change in the fire
dynamics
Figure 2: Fire power in different scenarios
Figure 3: Differences in fire progress
tunnel may cause the explosion of the wheels of heavy vehi-
cles, an additional risk to firemen who are next to the fire.
Besides, since asphalt is a thermoplastic material whose viscos-
ity decreases with temperature, it becomes significantly softer
at temperatures ranging between 150C and 180C, which are
reached approximately 5 minutes after the beginning of the fire
and at a distance of 45 meters from the origin of the fire. This
distance is longer than the working distance of firemen and it
makes their mobility inside the tunnel more complicated.
If asphalt contribution to fire were limited to the energy gen-
erated by burning pavement, the power increment would be 4
MW, since the burning surface considered is 100 m
2
and the
unit power emission is 40 kW/m. This power would represent
Vol 9 No 2 Europe/Rest of the World thinkinghighways.com 60
THE VIEW From Technology Creation to Deployment
Major infrastructure works need more than ITS
Andr Vits
A
t the time of writing Europe is
preparing itself to elect a new
Parliament. All the pros and
cons of the European Union have been
described in length in the national
newspapers and prominent members
of the European Parliament (EP) have
tried to convince the electorate to vote
for more or less EU. Looking at it from
a distance, it looks to me as although
we are arguing over issues that are im-
portant we have to put into perspective
where this adventure started. Having
been in the middle of this process for
more than 20 years, the revolution that
has taken place in Europe is astonishing.
As if the election of the EP was
not enough and subsequently a new
Commission, Im living in a country
were on the same day we also had
to vote for a federal and regional
parliament and of course the respective
governments. So, three levels with many
political parties and programmes
sufcient material for a master degree!
As an engineer with a particular
interested in transport I have been
reading the many proposals and
watching political debates on the matter.
Te most fascinating has been the
discussion at the regional level on the
extension of the Antwerp ring road.
Being at the crossroads of major fows of
freight, both north-south and east-west
in the largest city of Belgium (in terms
of inhabitants), the ring road is perhaps
one of the busiest in western Europe.
For almost 20 years, the need for a
new crossing of the Scheld to release
the congestion has been advocated.
Some fve years ago, a magnifcent plan
emerged from the drawing table of the
administration. Poor communication
and diplomatic skills of the project team
created such a public reaction that the
whole concept was questioned and
new alternative solutions have been
put forward by groups of contesters.
A FAMILIAR TALE
During this election campaign, another
group of contesters came up with the
additional demand to cover the ring
road over its entire length to reduce
the environmental impact and create
new areas for entertainment. In the
middle of the election campaign this
has obliged the party ofces to come
up with press communications and
comments, applauding the proposal
but without committing themselves
for the future. In any case, the group
who brought the idea in public will
not stop afer the elections when
a new government is in place.
Tis story is somewhat unfortunate
for the road users and the city
inhabitants as it delays the decision
process, demonstrates a number of
pitfalls in the planning process:
1) As engineers, we tend to focus
on the quality of the design, be it
buildings, infrastructure or other
grand designs. Still very little
attention is given to operational
aspects, and this is what the user
spots in the frst place! Te bridge,
for example, can be magnifcent (and
prominent politicians like to link
their name to it) but if it is planned
at the wrong place or has major
impact on existing residential and
business areas major reactions can
be expected whatever the overall
This story is
somewhat
unfortunate
for the road
users and
the city
inhabitants
as it delays
the decision
process
benefts will be. Te example is

perhaps trivial, but users generally
have good common sense and easily
spot the weakness in the overall plan.
2) Before jumping into the technical
design of the scheme, the social
acceptance process should be
carefully planned and executed. Tis
is a long and difcult process that
needs more skills than engineering.
It should lead to general acceptance
of a master plan and land use plans,
not only supported by a number of
political parties but by the public in
general. Long lead times give business
and public time to adapt to the land
use changes, and if needed fnancial
compensation should be considered.
3) During the whole planning and
design process, engineers and
project teams should remain open
to suggestions and alternatives.
Too ofen during public hearings
one can experience the hostility
of the project team when asked
to reconsider some elements of
the project and architects tend to
defend their design with irrational
arguments. Te reasons for this
reluctance are obvious for the public:
higher cost or smaller margins.
During the whole project cycle,
good and correct communication is
essential. Tis is very difcult because
even the communicator will form
his own opinion about the project
and voluntarily or involuntarily
will translate this in their messages.
Should one act like one prominent
fnancial advisor, who publicly stated
in a regional election show that he will
adopt a blank voice, arguing that in
his job he has to remain neutral, even
in the intimacy of the voting box?
Andr Vits is the former Head of Unit of the European
Commissions DG INFSO
andre.vits@skynet.be
toloslogolgoways.com ,i Luropo,ost of tho wor|d vo| B No 3
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[|ayors] cou|d d|scovor whon and whoro journoys woro qu|ckor for
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tho poss|b|||ty of crowdsourc|ng |nto|||gonco on routos and t|mos, as
part of gamo p|ay"
They could discover when and where journeys were quicker
for them and for their friends and competitors. Not only
would a player be competing to capture a station, they would
also see who was getting to that station fastest. What was
emerging was the possibility of crowdsourcing intelligence
on routes and times, as part of game play.
L5ONAL|5|NG YOU 1AN5O1
1HOUGH GAM|NG
The future of gamifying transport is to personalise the
experience of any journey to each user. To attach reward
to valuable activities for the network, like going to stations
less affected by rush hour congestion, easing pressure on key
hubs, to be more ecological in their transport modes, and
to see the transport network as a living thing comprised of
individuals that they can also influence.
The most difficult aspect is incentivisation and the funda-
mental thing to keep in mind is that one size does not fit all.
Not everyone likes games and even those that do dont like
all games. To incentivise you have to give the right rewards
to the people who will respond to that kind of activity. But
we believe the more you can give an element of ownership
of the experience to the user. The more that they feel that
they can customise or share in the development, the more
you can get people to come along with the game you want to
play with them.
Matt watk|ns |s Lc0 ot Muo|or|

matt.watk|nswoaromud|ark.com
weoremuo|or|.oom
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TH313_EU_Gamefication.indd 71 04/10/2013 16:48
C
r
e
a
tin
g
th
e
liv
e
a
b
le
c
it
y
The smart city should
not be only about the
technology. The
human being should
be at the centre of it
SMART TRANSPORT FOR CITIES AND REGIONS
L
a
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n
c
h

is
s
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e
D
e
c
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m
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r

2
0
13
ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH
IN TRANSPORT
How Belgiums Living Street
came to life, p24
BARCELONA CHICAGO FRANKFURT GHENT LONDON
MILTON KEYNES REBRO ROTTERDAM SO PAULO TOYOTA CITY TURKU
MOBILITY, MULTIMODALITY
& TRAFFIC EFFICIENCY
Why social media is generating a
wealth of usable data, p52
SAFETY & SECURITY IN
TRANSPORT
Intelligent technology is making
our cities safer, p78
SOCIAL & ECONOMIC
CHALLENGES
Universal transit systems are
open for business, p66
thinkingcities.com
Creating the
liveable city
Electromobility, open systems and the
rise of the intelligent environment
In association with
Published by
t
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in
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in
g

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3
media
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ia
0 OFC_TC_Cover spread.indd 1
22/11/2013 15:18
OUT NOW
Register NOW for your free copy at www.thinkingcities.com
H3B Media, in collaboration with Polis, are
pleased to announce a new title focusing on
smart transport solutions for cities and regions
Available
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OUT NOW
Register NOW for your free copy at www.thinkingcities.com
H3B Media, in collaboration with Polis, are
pleased to announce a new title focusing on
smart transport solutions for cities and regions
Available
in print
and online
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THE VIEW Australasian Perspective
Disruptive innovation in transport does it
lead to doing more with less?
Prof Phil Charles
T
he biggest issue facing transport
professionals today is how to
improve productivity deliver
more in a constrained resource
environment. As consumers, we are
accustomed to the constant productivity
improvements in technology and
related services that lead to dramatic
price reductions and performance
improvements otherwise known as
disruptive innovation. Examples include
the car compared to a horse and carriage,
email compared to postal mail, or the PC
compared to mainframe computers.
Can disruptive innovation be part
of the solution to transport budget
constraints? Te challenge is that
transport infrastructure and services
are primarily provided and managed by
the public sector, where there are few
examples of disruptive innovation.
Elected ofcials and top management
are demanding transport professionals
to do more for less. Unfortunately budget
cuts only encourage doing the same with
less, and more than likely results in doing
less with less! And relying on an annual
budget cycle only results in short-term
thinking.
Disruptive innovation means
deploying entirely new technologies and
services to create value and radically
reducing costs while maintaining or
improving services.
In the private sector market forces
drive innovation, as proft is increased
through creating new products and
services that outperform current ones.
Tese competitive forces and incentives
dont usually exist in the public sector and
innovation is frustrated by politics and
red tape.
Tere are many opportunities to
reduce taxpayer funding and deliver
improved levels of service. An example
of a potentially disruptive innovation is
the parking management system being
introduced in Washington, DC. Based
on a smartphone app replacing parking
meters mobile payment systems provide
the ability to vary parking prices based
on supply and demand and increase
revenue, and provide accurate real-time
information to customers.
KEYS TO INNOVATION
So what are the keys to disruptive
innovation in transport?
1. Results focus: carefully and clearly
articulating the priority transport
outcomes, being as specifc as possible,
and not constrained by what has been
done in the past. Defne the trade-
ofs, and consider how they could be
reconfgured. For example, the trade-
of between fares or prices and quality
of service.
2. Pilot program: test new concepts as
carefully designed experiments, using
professional project management to
ensure efcient delivery, and measure
and report performance.
3. Separate Unit: to be successful requires
a separate, lean autonomous unit with
a clear charter, a realistic business
plan, limits to political interference,
access to minimal resources
(capability, systems, funding) and in
the short-term, minimum reporting
requirements. Provide white space for
innovation a bufer from the threats
of special interest groups, rules and
bureaucracy and provide encouraging
top-level support for innovation.
The challenge
is that
transport
infrastructure
and services
are primarily
provided and
managed by
the public
sector, where
there are few
examples of
disruptive
innovation
4. Market focus: choose a specifc

market segment to start an innovation
project. Governments are ofen a
dominant buyer and can shape the
markets they operate in. Choose
where there is greatest potential for
improvement, focus on a key segment
that has the potential for the greatest
impact. It is important to develop and
align appropriate incentives, both
for the public and private sectors, to
achieve the desired outcome.
5. Align stakeholders: ensure afected
stakeholders are aligned with the pilot
program. Where an efort has been
made to involve stakeholders, the less
critical they are likely to be, as they
have a better understanding of the
processes, issues and what you are
trying to achieve.
6. Demonstrate results: the best case
for change is one that has been
argued using scientifc research and
valid data.
7. Identify next steps: having run
a successful pilot program the
critical success factor is speed of
implementation. To achieve this
requires identifying the lessons from
the pilot program then setting out
how the program can be scaled to
achieve maximum benefts, including
opportunities for additional revenue
sources, changes needs in regulations
and procedures, and change
management strategy for public and
private sector players.
Disruptive innovation should be part
of the solutions to transport budget
constraints. As transport professionals
it is our responsibility to challenge the
status quo and seek out innovative ways
of delivering more efective outcomes for
reduced taxpayer investment.
Phil Charles is Professor of Transport at the University
of Queensland, Brisbane. p.charles@uq.edu.au
http://transport-futures.com
NOTE
Further reading:
Sahni, N.,
Wessel, M. and
Christensen, C.
2013. Unleashing
Breakthrough
Innovation in
Government,
Stanford Social
Innovation Review.
T
he last decades road pricing
schemes as travel demand
management policies are widely
studied within the EU. Rationing
policies, including exceptional vehicle
usage restrictions, have been already
implemented in several regions in
eforts to address congestion and other
negative transportation externalities.
However, one thing is certain complex
issues as a trafc demand matrix
cannot be answered just by pricing
mechanisms. Of course it is clear
that road charging (though not easily
accepted by policy makers) needs
to attract growing socio-economic
interest. It is a good sign that in the era
of mobility vehicle usage restrictions, as
possible policy measures, are more and
more forgotten as it is well recognized
that such usage restrictions will always
cause welfare losses. More briefy, the
states and the industry need to co-
examine a realistic road management of
real heterogenous users on real roads.
Te wise gurus say that diversity and
independence are important because the
best collective decisions are the product
of disagreement and contest Tey
support that the best way for a group to
be smart is: for each person in it to think
and act as independently as possible.
Drinking cofee in Place de Luxembourg
under the sun, I love these wise (but
so provocative and challenging) ideas.
Te weather is surprisingly warm for
Brussels and it is perhaps making me
feel that I am ready to compromise. Why
not? But where is the dangerous apple
of knowledge hidden?
When societal models change (as
they are doomed to be always replaced
term in a sustainable environment. As
motorway operators/managers we work
hard trying, in close cooperation with
the public authorities, to design and
build safe and efcient roads getting our
drivers satisfed with the well-managed
trafc we provide to them as a high
quality service.
Te transport service we produce
and provide is a simple handbook
with two chapters. Te one chapter
describes how we build and fnance
our good infrastructure while the
other one analyzes how we manage
this infrastructure using the proper
cooperative I2I and I2V instruments,
based on interactive information
channels. Our priority is a simple one:
we dont want to surprise our drivers,
neither by a wrong design, or a wrong
construction, unforeseen congestion or
diverting them to the middle of nowhere
without the proper information.
We, the motorways, wonder why
are more and more people oversharing
personal info? Is it because social
media and telecoms have made it the
norm to tell everybody everything
or do we all have all a desperate need
for connection? For us sharing specifc
information is crucial in building trust
with our drivers. We know that some
proper guidance help all to control
the modern obsessive sharing disorder.
So we hope that our drivers should ask
themselves who they are listening to.
Drivers are connected as never before,
but in our information network less is
better and decency, common sense and
good management never go out of style.
We fully respect the public opinion but
in our business we dont mix the public
opinion with the right opinion.
Te key is neither chaos not
oppression, but a just enforcement.
by the new models) they need always
to redefne the basic corner stones
and more specifcally the new balance
between the terms democracy and
order. A phrase I always remember
from my wise grandmother is
grandson, dont forget that in
democratic societies we always trade
freedom for prosperity. Now, getting
older, I am mature enough to know
that this was not a theoretical pseudo-
philosophy, but a hard truth.
On our networks, we, the motorways
managers, use the above phrase as our
key motto and we act accordingly. On
our networks we manage hard and
we trade unordered heterogeneous
chaos for monitored order, providing
a service characterized by appropriate
speed, comfort, security and above
all the highest levels of safety on a daily
basis. We prove to be less tolerant of
non-sense trafc demand and our key is
right enforcement against oppression.
Are we revolutionary? I dont think
so. Our motorway managers and CEOs
are encouraged to act more like owners
of the motorways, we feel they are our
roads as they are our homes, our entities.
As an active member of the ITS
world, I can easily state that priorities in
the EU cities, regions and states are not
harmonized; ITS technologies are not
mature. Time is needed where private
and public must come together and
talk, to see the deployment side of the
political messages and mainly evaluate
their cost. Tere is one word that both,
public and private use when talking,
but they surely translate it diferently.
Te term is proft that must be seen
as a well calibrated socio-economic
THE VIEW Tolling the Highways of the Future
Theory versus reality or exploring the
universe of the weird
Kallistratos Dionelis
Kallistratos Dionelis is Secretary General of ASECAP.
kdionelis@asecap.com
The
transport
service we
produce
and provide
is a simple
handbook
with two
chapters

THE VIEW Thinking the Highway of the Future
Intelligent road mobility: now or never
Jos F Pap
I
ntelligent Transport Systems (ITS)
have revolutionized the way business
and private mobility is understood
in a safer, greener and smarter transport
system. Despite the progress made,
I am of the opinion that the actual
deployment of ITS solutions is not
yet sufcient: ITS systems must make
further progress to achieve full potential
and provide true quality and real-time
information to road users. Afer having
mapped out more than 500 R&D and
innovation projects worldwide, the
IR2Bs Strategic Road Research Agenda
has identifed 32 research priorities to
bring the Smart Roads concept to reality
by 2025 in the feld of intelligent road
mobility. Let me briefy review them:
Efective implementation of
Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS)
Enhanced synergies derived from data
already supplied by ITS equipment
installed in road infrastructures
(Priorities 72-75 of the IR2Bs Strategic Road
Research Agenda, period 2013-2015)
Te time has come to go beyond the
elaboration of new ITS studies,
analysis and strategies. Te binomial
enforcement agents cameras and
radars needs to be overcome, upgrading
the value of existing information and
data with more advanced ITS systems.
Users must obtain more detailed journey
times through smarter processing of
data already available from a variety
of sources (sensors, Bluetooth, ALPR,
satellite, etc). I trust only then will ITS
become an unsegmented market in
which solutions with mass appeal will
beneft billions of customers worldwide.
Optimizing the utilization of existing
road infrastructures
(Priorities 76-82, period 2013-2015)

Attaining Te Highway of the Future
also demands a greater optimization
of existing infrastructure capacity.
Te trafc management systems of
tomorrow should therefore address
this challenge and run tools allowing
an efcient and dynamic operation of
roads, according to the trafc conditions
at a given moment.
Provision of quality and real-time
information to users on the travel
options available in the road network,
both in public transport and in other
transport modes
Whether we like or not, we have come
to a point in which the transport
mode approach is becoming old-
fashioned: today we must refer to a
transport system I would even call
it ecosystem ITS systems can and
must have a crucial role in this context,
by developing technologies that facilitate
freight and passenger transfer between
the diferent transport modes, which can
be coordinated more efciently in order
to cut travel times and costs.
A more sustainable and
environmentally-friendly road mobility
Defnition of mobility models adapted
to a new generation of vehicles
At the IR2B we also believe that
infrastructure-based ITS systems
must promote more efcient mobility
scenarios that beneft from car industry
development and respond to the
Whether
we like or
not, we have
come to
a point in
which the
transport
mode
approach is
becoming
old-
fashioned
requirements and opportunities brought

by electric, hybrid, plug-in, hydrogen-
powered vehicles, etc.
Development and deployment of I2V,
V2I, V2V and I2I cooperative systems
in urban and interurban areas
Integrating data generated by both
vehicles (V) and the infrastructure
itself (I) is a prerequisite if ITS systems
are to provide high-quality services
to road users. Yet these cooperative
systems must operate within a common
framework and an integral architecture,
with a clear defnition of the roles
assigned to the V and the IStill
much work to do, isnt there?
eROAD: Te electronic road 2.0
Dynamic infrastructure charging systems
In the long run ITS will defnitively build
the mobility scenarios of tomorrow,
paving the way for groundbreaking
solutions such as automated mobility,
prediction of driver behaviour, dynamic
charging of vehicle use through a reliable
and precise positioning system, etc.
I deem the future eROAD will be a
collaborative electronic road 2.0, where
users will exchange data in order to
disseminate information and contribute
to a sustainable road operation and
maintenance.In short, most of the
challenges posed by the intelligent road
mobility of the future are still ahead of
us and represent a fantastic business
opportunity for the trafc management
industry. I therefore invite you to
review the roadmap proposed by the
IR2B to address them (downloadable
for free from http://www.ir2b.
org/#!publications/cmx9).
What are we waiting for?
Jos F Pap is Chairman of the International Road Research Board, IR2B
info@ir2b.org; www.ir2b.org @The_IR2B (LinkedIn) http://goo.gl/zTiMj7
THE VIEW IBEC: ITS and Evaluation
Evaluating incremental and radical innovations
Dr Alan Stevens
B
eneft-cost assessment
(BCA) methodologies have
a long history and despite
many acknowledged faws and
subtle arguments are well embedded
in many business processes. In
mainstream implementation, the
essential process is to monetise and
then add all the expected costs and
all the expected benefts into the
future and then discount back to
present day. Such a process works
well for projects that involve building
a new facility or developing a new
service such as Automatic Crash
Notifcation (eCall in Europe). Before
the project, the facility or service isnt
there and we envisage the process
and the future costs and benefts.
Te situation becomes more
interesting in the real world where
innovation is ofen incremental and
takes place against a backdrop of
existing products and processes, some of
which are disturbed by the innovation.
Tis seems particularly to be the case
in the developing area of cooperative
systems (connected vehicles) and the
rapid but incremental progress being
made towards more automated systems.
Figure 1 illustrates how both
the road infrastructure and the
vehicles that use the infrastructure
are increasingly becoming smarter.
Every step brings benefts by building
on previous developments. In one
view, automated vehicles are a radical
innovation but they can also be seen
as the result of many incremental
developments of the past 20 years.
As noted, innovation whether radical
or incremental, can disturb the status
In one view,
automated
vehicles are
a radical
innovation
but they can
also be seen
as the result
of many
incremental
developments
of the past
20 years
BCA of the individual steps. Of course,

in looking forward it may not be clear
where we are going and there is a
greater innovation risk the more radical
the change. It seems that ofen we are
implicitly prepared to accept lower BCA
because of the lower innovation risk.
Tis argument is not just academic as
step-skipping is a particularly relevant
issue for emerging economies that can
take advantage of the experience from
other regions. Even for those economies
further along the ITS development
path the question of how we value
radical and incremental innovations
is still very much an open issue.
IBEC is organising a number of
sessions and events in association
with the ITS World congress in
Detroit this year relevant to this topic.
Tese include: IBEC4 Evaluation of
highly automated driving and truck
platooning; IBEC5 Evaluating benefts
and business cases for cooperative
ITS (connected vehicles); and the
IBEC Workshop Evaluation of
connected (vehicle and infrastructure)
and autonomous vehicles.
Alan Stevens is Research Director, Transportation at
TRL and IBEC Management Committee Member
astevens@trl.co.uk
Figure 1:
Progress towards
cooperative
and automated
systems
quo and may marginalise or render
redundant previous facilities or services.
For example, road loops can be largely
replaced by above ground sensors or
by connected vehicles communicating
with the infrastructure; similarly, the
need for Variable Message Signs will
likely be reduced (or, at least, the signs
simplifed) with the advent of in-vehicle
messaging via smartphone Apps.
How these efects are taken into
account by BCA is an area that probably
needs more attention. Previous
generations of technology are be treated
as a sunk cost in BCA and, in a way
the risk of redundancy can be included
by estimating the number of years that
future benefts will be counted. But
should this risk be made more explicit?
Another issue is how efcient the
incremental progress is in the sense that
each step requires investment that will
become, at least partially, redundant
by the next step which also requires
investment. If we had the foresight
and it were possible to skip some steps,
then the BCA should be improved
compared with the actual (delivered)
THE VIEW Automated Vehicles
Not for the first time Google has us all agog
Richard Bishop
L
ast month, Google once again
put the media and pundits into
something of a frenzy. Yes,
Google is really building their own
cars, and they will drive themselves.
Google, now engaged in a wide
variety of projects, actually started
with the self-driving car project. From
the beginning, they focused on a
transformational approach developing
vehicles that can do ALL the driving,
with no need for human input other
than where to go. Googles approach is
captured by this (paraphrased) quote
from Chris Urmson, leader of the self-
driving car team: You can get a lot more
fred up in the morning when youre
thinking about changing the world
rather than making an incremental
improvement on something.
Now theyve unveiled their change-
the-world starting point low speed
automated taxis to serve, initially, their
employees moving between buildings in
their spread-out complex in Mountain
View, California. Vehicles would be
summoned with a smartphone to pick up
and drop of passengers at the doorstep.
Service would be opened up to the public
from there. Ultimately the plan is to
serve disabled and elderly people who
cannot drive but want full mobility.
Googles feet of 100 vehicles which
theyve designed are not an adaptation
of the common car, even though theyre
being built in Detroit. Teir footprint
is somewhat like the Fiat 500 or the
Smart city cars currently on the roads,
but thats where the similarities end.
Tey have no steering wheel, brakes,
or accelerator pedal just a start/stop
button. Teir speed is capped at 25 mph;
a speed range in which safety regulations
for crashworthiness are typically not
as stringent, an important factor for
building vehicles from the ground up.
Tis summer Google will begin
testing these vehicles with their own
drivers. Afer that, they aim to run
a small pilot program in California
in the next couple of years (within
the bounds of Californias recently
published autonomous vehicle
testing regulations). Based on the
results, they say theyll work with
partners to bring it to market.
Teir concept is quite similar to the
work done in Europe in the CyberCar
and CityMobil projects over the last
decade or so. In the current CityMobil2
project, small urban automated vehicles
are being deployed in six-month
demonstrations in fve cities. Plus, in
2017 Volvo Cars is ofering automated
production vehicles to members of the
public for their DriveMe trial across 50
km of roads in and around Gothenburg.
Yes, the media will continue to froth
over Google, but clearly a wide range of
key players are active as well.
Google says the auto industrys
incremental approach asking humans
to monitor automation and be ready to
step back into the control loop, whether
immediately or with a time bufer is
fawed because humans are, well,
human. As we gain confdence in our
self-driving vehicles (and this happens
very quickly based on my experience
and afrmed by Google founder Sergey
Brin in interviews), we are going to get
engrossed in something other than
the road scene, or take a nap. We may
not be there when our car needs us.
You can get

a lot more
fired up in
the morning
when youre
thinking
about
changing
the world
rather than
making an
incremental
improvement
on something
Dont assume, however, that the

incremental approach is impossible
for the car industry. Tis goes back
to personal responsibility. It goes
to well-informed users and well-
designed human interfaces. It goes
to fail-operational systems when the
human does not step in. All of which
is well within the capability of the
auto industry. Some will do it better
than others, and there will be the
inevitable viral videos and debates.
But it will nevertheless happen.
Googles move has huge signifcance.
Afer stimulating the entire automotive
industry and fascinating the public with
the initial unveiling of their self-driving
car in 2010, speculation about where
theyre going to take it has been endless.
Now we see they have crystalized
their focus on urban mobility. Tis
is a good ft with the mobility as a
service concept. A future ofering
would involve a service provider who
owns the vehicles, maintains and tests
them to high standards, and limits
geographic range to stay within pre-
mapped areas approved for automated
operation. Cars sold to private owners
are obviously much more difcult to
monitor and limiting their geographic
usage is not a great sales proposition.
And, by ofering vehicles without
traditional controls, Google is
creating even more distance from
the car companies, staking out their
domain even more defnitively.
In the ideal case, Googles automated
taxi performs superbly and the concept
takes of, ploughing the ground
for the larger market served by the
automakers to build widespread trust
in automated driving technology.
Lets watch what happens we in
the ITS world have ringside seats.
Richard Bishop is principal of Bishop Consulting and Associate Editor of Thinking Highways North America
richard.bishop@mindspring.com; www.auvsi.org; www.vehicleautomation.org
Follow Richard at #ThinkingCarsH3B
THE VIEW Taking the Initiative
Traffic radio may be making a comeback but why
did it go away in the first place?
Paul Hutton
M
otorists are being
encouraged to not
miss a thing and keep
up to date on their journey by using
digital radio screamed the subject line
of a British Government press release
which burst into my inbox recently.
Te crux of the release was that
digital radio in cars was growing and
people who have digital radio would
be able to keep up to date, although
quite what they were to keep up to
date with was not specifed. Steam
started coming from my ears. Why?
Because if you put keeping up to
date and cars together, you must
therefore conclude that one of the things
you may wish to keep up to date with
is trafc information. Tis release was
suggesting it should be via DAB radio.
Tis has annoyed me somewhat
because the British Government, in
England anyway through its Highways
Agency, used to have its own Trafc
Radio station, reporting on jams and
incidents 24/7 on DAB. You could
say I was quite close to it because
in one former role I was part of the
team that started the station, and later
was the Managing Director of the
company that provided the contract.
Te station was launched in the mid-
2000s when there werent that many
in-car digital radio sets but it had to be
digital because the analogue spectrum
(AM and FM) was so frequencies were
unavailable. We knew that building an
audience would take a while but even
with a relatively low in-car audience,
research we conducted suggested the
beneft to the wider economy was
greater than the cost of the service, and
the service kept getting more popular as
in-car DAB and streaming of radio grew.
Ten a rather unhelpful article
in a Sunday newspaper, coinciding
with budget cuts, led to the station
being closed down just as the gradient
of a graph of in-car DAB take-up
started to rise signifcantly, and just
before the Olympics when traveller
information was seen as vital.
Hence, me being somewhat irked
at the Governments support for us to
keep up to date when it had shut down
something we could use to do exactly
that. Maybe theyre planning to bring
it back, which would delight me (and
would delight me even more if they call
me up and ask my advice!). Or maybe
the person who wrote this release had
no idea the Government had ever had a
trafc station on DAB in the frst place.
Tis led me to think about what
other projects may have been tried
out, ended and then disappeared into
the ether. I have done some relatively
simple Googling and havent found
anything which looks like a repository
of old ideas. (Forgive me if one exists
and Im ignorant of it, if thats the case
please email me and let me know.)
Teres the Biblical line about
A rather
unhelpful
article
in a Sunday
newspaper
led to the
station
being closed
down just as
the take-up of
DAB
started
to rise
significantly
nothing new under the sun, and thats

very true of ideas. Trafc Radio was a
reworking of ITIS Travel Now, and
the current excellent INRIX Internet
service Travel Radio is a reworking
of the Highways Agencys station.
How many old ideas and projects
have been done, fled away and
forgotten, when in fact many of the
lessons learned and mistakes made
could be valuable in current and future
work, if only it were made available and
people knew where to look? I know the
HA has a knowledge compendium but
it doesnt cover everything and is not
well known. When taxpayers money
has been used, surely its important
for that work to get maximum
return in whatever way it can be?
And there are so many things
which have cross-border usefulness
that projects in one country or region
should be clearly documented,
with lessons learned and mistakes
made, summarised and tagged
to make it easy to fnd.
A CHANGE OF HAT
Private companies might even want
to take part, too. Tey may not wish to
share current work but afer a period
of time publicise what worked and
what didnt to improve projects and
allow people to dream up new, better
ideas based on what has gone before.
With my consultants hat on,
such a thing might cost me work
because expertise is freely available
online which I would otherwise
be able to charge for, but for the
greater good not only in ITS but
across industry I think its vital.
But if anyone does create such
a thing, could they please keep
me up to date with progress?
Paul Hutton is head of H3B Medias Broadcast Services Division, founder of PH Initiatives and
presenter of our Thinking Aloud podcast. paul@phinitiatives.com; www.phinitiatives.com;
thinkinghighways.com/podcasts; thinkingaloudpodcast.com
Encouraging the
use of in-car digital
radio for traffic
information is not
a new idea, so why
was a perfectly
good service shut
down as DAB radio
was just taking off?
THE VIEW European Transport Financing
A car-vignette for foreigners using
German Autobahns
Dr Andreas Kossak
G
erman car owners have to
pay for the use of certain
roads in foreign countries.
Foreign car owners use German
roads for free. Tat is not fair and no
longer acceptable. In order to make
sure that they adequately contribute
to the infrastructure costs, a vignette
must be introduced for the use of the
German Autobahns by foreign car-
owners. Tat was the repeatedly stated
position of the Bavarian Christian
Social Party (CSU) during the Federal
election campaign in Germany
last year. Te CSU is the sister- and
coalition-party of the reigning
Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Afer the victory of the black
parties, the Bavarian governor and
chief of the CSU claimed that he would
not sign any coalition contract for
the upcoming legislative period that
does not include the car-vignette
for foreigners connected to the
condition that no German car-owner
has to pay any additional cent in this
context. Te price of a vignette being
valid for one year was proclaimed
to be 100. Meanwhile the coalition
contract was signed. It includes the
frm intention to introduce a car-
vignette for foreigners compatible
with the relevant EU-regulations. Te
new Federal Minister of Transport
is a Bavarian from the CSU.
A TAXING ISSUE
A fundamental principle of the
European Union is the non-
discrimination of foreigners. Tat
means in this case that a vignette may
only be introduced, if residents and
foreigners are treated equal in the
respective regard. In order to comply
with the demanded condition that no
German car owner should sufer any
additional burden, it is stated by the
Minister of Transport that the vehicle
tax in Germany will be reduced by 100.
Tat sounds simple but the approach
contains numerous questionable
aspects and components respectively:
Te share of foreign cars using
German Autobahns amount to
only about 6 per cent (in terms
of trafc-performance).
Te transaction-/enforcement-
system however will have to
include 100 per cent of the users.
As a consequence of these
two facts the net-revenue
would be comparably low if
there would be any at all.
According to EU regulations
vignettes must be ofered split
into diferent periods of time (for
example: year, month, week, day
for foreigners and residents).
A substantial part of the German
car owners pay less than 100
vehicle tax per year; and: what
about the car-owners intending
not to use the Autobahns or only
to use them few times a year?
A direct coupling of the introduction
of the vignette with the reduction
of the vehicle-tax for residents
would not comply with EU-law.
Nevertheless the Federal Minister of
Transport announced that the details
of the project will be published before
the 2014 summer holiday season
and that the vignette-system will
The whole
affair is
a typical
example for
the handling
of tolling
road use by
politicians
to date
not only in
Germany
be activated on 1 January 2016.

In fact there are some viable
tricks to make the system work
without directly violating EU-
law in particular decoupling the
introduction of the vignette and the
reduction of the vehicle tax. However,
the approach as a whole is basically
founded neither logical nor fair:
In those European countries, were
time-related tolls (eight countries
out of EU 27 + three) or distant
related tolls (nine countries) are
collected, the residents have to
pay the same like foreigners.
A toll for all foreign car-owners
using German Autobahns
will have to be paid as well by
car-owners being residents in
countries where no tolls for
any road use are collected.
Te tax-burden of German car-
owners does not exceed the average
tax burden of foreigners from
other EU member countries.

Taking all that into account, the
other EU member countries (in
particular the neighbouring countries
of Germany) have more than
enough good reasons for protesting
against the respective plans, and
they yet announced to do so. On
the other hand, the whole afair is
a typical example for the handling
of tolling road use by politicians to
date not only in Germany. Te
internationally renowned director of
the British Royal Automobile Club
Foundation Prof. Stephen Glaister,
marked that in 2011 by stating
there is still considerable ignorance
and misunderstanding about it.
Not very much has changed
since then, sadly.
Dr Andreas Kossak is Principal of AK Research
& Consulting, based in Hamburg, Germany
drkossak@aol.com
Reinventing Transportation
in our Connected World
September 7-11 | Detroit, Michigan
Produced by:
Co-hosts:
Join the 10,000 international transportation professionals who will
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The 2014 ITS World Congress boasts keynote addresses from
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ThinkingHighways_EuropeJUNE.pdf 1 6/2/14 1:50 PM
Shows within shows
I
ts always nice to see the audience fig-
ures for Thinking Aloud, the Thinking
Highways podcast, and how many
people enjoy listening to our on-demand
radio programmes from various major
ITS events around the world.
But when we were at Intertraffic in
Amsterdam I actually had an audi-
ence whilst I was making a programme,
because I was putting the whole thing
together whilst seated at the Thinking
Highways stand.
One of the beauties of modern tech-
nology is the ability to do things remotely
that used to require specific equipment
in a specific place. Aside from the fact we
wouldnt be able to easily disseminate the
programme, 20 years or so ago wed never
have had the ability to build a 30-minute
news programme from remote locations
without transporting tape machines and
tape, sound mixers, microphones and
the various paraphernalia that went with
creating radio programmes (including
old fashioned tape-splicing razor blades
which they might not let on the plane
these days!).
Now, with some (fairly expensive)
software, a decent audio recorder and the
knowledge of what to do, we can create a
programme from anywhere. Thats why I
was able to sit at a desk in the middle of
the worlds biggest traffic conference and
create four episodes of Thinking Aloud.
Its also why Ive previously put these
shows together in airport lounges, on
aeroplanes themselves and even with my
Macbook perched on an ironing board
in the apartment we were renting during
last years ITS Europe Congress in Dublin
(the laundry room was the only place we
had wifi, you understand).
Our Live from series highlight so far
this year was at Intertraffic, where we
delivered a series of programmes inter-
viewing some old and new contributors
to the programme, learning about eve-
rything from radar-based lighting con-
trols to smart ANPR cameras which can
determine the make, model and colour of
a car as well as its license plate.
These programmes were sponsored
by AGD Systems, Nicander, Swarco,
Vitronic and WDM. And Id like to espe-
cially thank our sponsors for their ongo-
ing support, without whom we simply
wouldnt have Thinking Aloud.
APPOINTMENT TO LISTEN
Our programmes are very popular with
listeners because they bring an almost
summary of whats going on at the
major shows. People watching me make
the show in Amsterdam told me that
they like to download it to their phones
in the morning and listen to it en route
to the event. When they get there they
already have a feel for whats worth see-
ing, and more than one piece of business
has been done thanks to people hearing
about an new initiative and therefore
heading straight to the relevant stand to
find out more.
Sponsors do get their moneys worth
from supporting the programmes.
Although anyone with a story to tell can
get on Thinking Aloud (we dont charge
you to be a part of the programme), we
will always include interviews with our
sponsors. They get a radio-style advert in
each programme, three sponsor credits,
logos and links on our website and on
emails to the thousands of people on the
Thinking Highways database (and some-
times the events database too) and also
in the magazine. Like in this article, for
example!
As well as Amsterdam, weve been
in Athens for ASECAPs Study and
Information Days (with thanks to
DBA Lab), and also in Leipzig for an
International Transport Forum side-
event brought to you by the PTV Group
that I moderated and recorded at the
same time. Listeners got to hear four
of Europes leading experts on logistics
debate how the logistics sector fits into
governmental planning in cities. The
session itself was about an hour and a
quarter long, so we split it into two pro-
grammes, edited out gaps and produced
two half-hour podcasts which are well
worth a listen, if I say so myself.
FIND US IN FINLAND
Kevin Borras will be our man in Helsinki
for the ITS Europe Congress (another
handy use of technology is that I can
edit the files even if Im not at the event)
and then were planning our major road-
show of the year the World Congress
in Detroit in September, which looks like
(according to an interview which youll
hear on one of our Intertraffic bonus
shows) itll be a great event.
We look forward to seeing you there,
and if enough people watch me doing
the production, we may even get a
round of applause.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Paul Hutton is the head of H3B
Medias Broadcast Services
Division
paul@thinkingaloudpodcast.com
thinkinghighways.com/podcasts
thinkinglaooudpodcast.com
For more information about
sponsorship opportunities for
Thinking Aloud, email Paul at
paul@thinkingaloudpodcast.com
H3B MEDIA BROADCAST SERVICES Thinking Aloud podcasts
Paul Hutton looks back on another busy few weeks
on the road for the Thinking Aloud production team
category/podcasts
Listen to how the
industry is thinking
H3B Media Broadcast Services thanks the sponsors of
our Thinking Aloud Podcasts for their support!
Thinking Aloud
Live From TRB,
Washington, DC
Documentary Podcast
ENFORCEMENT
Thinking Aloud
Live From ISE,
Amsterdam
Documentary Podcast
MACHINE VISION
Thinking Aloud
Live From Intertrafc,
Amsterdam
Documentary Podcast
THINKING CITIES
Thinking Aloud
Live From
International Transport
Forum, Leipzig
Documentary Podcast
SMART MOBILITY
Thinking Aloud
Live From ASECAP Study
& Information Days,
Athens
Documentary Podcast
SMART SAFETY
SOLUTIONS
READER SERVICES
Axis .................................................25
Barco ............. outside back cover
Crown International ...............61
DBA Lab .......................................41
FLIR ITS .......................................33
IRD .................................................43
Iteris .................................................. 9
ITS Europe Congress
2014 ..................inside back cover
ITS World Congress 2014 ....69
JAI .................... inside front cover
Jupiter ............................................21
Moxa ..............................................29
PTV ................................................37
Siemens ........................................... 7
Smart Microwave Systems ...11
Swarco ............................................. 3
Thinking Cities ...........................61
Thinking Aloud Podcast ........71
TSS ..................................................72
Vitronic .........................................13
Vysionics ......................................53
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ADVERTISERS
For all enquiries regarding advertising in Thinking
Highways and other H3B Media products please contact
Luis Hill at luis@h3bm.com tel. +44 (0)20 3463 9485
To continue receiving the Europe/Rest of the World
edition make sure your registration does not expire
Go online now to register FREE
at thinkinghighways.com
DONT MISS OUT ON YOUR COPY OF
.com
.com
thinkinghighways.com Volume 9 Number 2 June/July 2014
A SHIFT IN EMPHASIS
changing role of the traffic control centre
Finnish on a high
Small nation,
big ideas
The approach that makes the ITS Europe Congress host country so unique
EUROPE AND REST
OF THE WORLD
EDITION
TCC Documentary Podcast available NOW!
Podcast LISTEN NOW AT http://thinkinghighways.com/ category/podcasts/
TECHNOLOGY
The importance of the perfectly executed Russian toll road, p18
INNOVATION
Geoff Collins goes hehind the scenes of a particularly English traffic project, p14
SPECIFICATIONS
Open source and open data for the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, p22
SMART MOBILITY FITSRUS: the Helsinki to St Petersburg Smart Transport Corridor, p26
0_TH214_EU_COVER.indd 1
04/06/2014 14:55
INTERNATIONAL ROAD DYNAMICS INC.
www.irdinc.com | info@irdinc.com
VISIT US AT STAND
Highway Toll Collection
Systems
Service and Maintenance Fleet Telematics
Traffic Data Collection Systems
Commercial Vehicle
Enforcement/Operations
Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) Scales
& Sensors
Border and Security Systems
HTMS/Traffic Safety Systems
Rule your traffic kingdom.
With IRDs ITS Solutions
Download an Aimsun 8 free trial version
for Windows, Mac or Linux
from www.aimsun.com
or contact info@aimsun.com
for features and pricing.
Traffic modeling
without boundaries
dynamic traffic assignment in a
single, easy-to-use package
meso and micro simulation and
Travel demand modeling, hybrid
C
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CM
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CY
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aimsun_90x270.pdf 1 09/01/2013 16:58
Download an Aimsun 8 free trial version
for Windows, Mac or Linux
from www.aimsun.com
or contact info@aimsun.com
for features and pricing.
Traffic modeling
without boundaries
dynamic traffic assignment in a
single, easy-to-use package
meso and micro simulation and
Travel demand modeling, hybrid
C
M
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CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
aimsun_90x270.pdf 1 09/01/2013 16:58
See us on Stand 11.130
48-51_TH413_EU_Plisner.indd 51 24/01/2014 12:19
READER SERVICES
AGD Systems .....................IFC
ASECAP Days 2014 ............ 69
Axis Communications .... OBC
Barco ...................................... 21
Crown International ............ 61
eyevis ..................................... 57
FLIR ....................................... 37
International Road Dynamics .....47
Iteris ......................................... 9
ITS Europe Congress 2014 .. IBC
ITS World Congress 2014 .... 77
JAI ........................................... 35
Jupiter .................................... 19
Moxa ...................................... 27
PTV Group ........................... 47
Siemens ................................... 7
Smart Microwave Systems .. 11
Swarco ..................................... 3
Thinking Aloud
Podcast sponsors .................. 79
Thinking Cities ...................... 61
TSS ......................................... 80
Videotec ................................. 51
Vitronic .................................. 13
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ADVERTISERS
For all enquiries regarding advertising in Thinking
Highways and other H3B Media products please contact
Luis Hill at luis@h3bm.com tel. +44 (0)20 3463 9485
To continue receiving the Europe/Rest of the World
edition make sure your registration does not expire
Go online now to register FREE
at thinkinghighways.com
DONT MISS OUT ON YOUR COPY OF
What happens today is in your hands. Whether youre faced with congestion, accidents or severe weather, its your job to keep the trafc moving. And its our job to help you. Our smart trafc monitoring solutions will take you straight to the heart of the action, so you can make the right move, at the right time every time.
Make your next move now, visit www.axis.com/yourtrafc
Your Trafc.
Your Move.
axis_ad_traffic-overlook_thinkinghighways_210x260_en_1403.indd 1
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INTERTRAFFIC PREVIEW CROWDSOURCING FINLAND CALM TWO NEW COLUMNS
thinkinghighways.com Volume 9 Number 1 March/April 2014
Possessive case Bob Williams investigates the curious
case of vehicle data ownership
Protect
and survive
Made in
Taiwan
Paul Hutton talks
smart safety solutions
with a panel of experts
How to reap the
benefits of a user-pays
ETC system
EUROPE AND REST
OF THE WORLD
EDITION
TECHNOLOGY
Keeping a watchful eye on Marseilles crucial tunnel network, p24
MOBILITY
How ecomobility is helping Europe steer towards a more sustainable future, p34
DESIGN
What needs to be considered when creating a new traffic product, p52
RESEARCH
Elena de la Pea introduces the International Road Research Board, p66
Smart Safety Solutions documentary available NOW!
PLUS: Listen to our range of podcasts!
Podcast LISTEN NOW AT thinkinghighways.com/podcasts
COVERS.indd 1
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smart_launch_ad4b.indd 1 23/01/14 12:25 barco_NO FLASH.indd 1 12/03/2014 16:49 2-3_TH413_EU_Contents.indd 2 14/03/2014 14:38

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Volume 9 Number 2 June/July 2014
A SHIFT IN EMPHASIS
changing role of the traffic
control centre
Finnish on a high
Small nation,
big ideas
The approach that makes the
ITS Europe Congress host
country so unique
EUROPE AND REST
OF THE WORLD
EDITION
available NOW!
category/podcasts/
TECHNOLOGY
The importance of the
perfectly executed Russian
toll road, p18
INNOVATION
Geoff Collins goes hehind the
scenes of a particularly English
traffic project, p14
SPECIFICATIONS
Open source and open data for
the Norwegian Public Roads
Administration, p22
SMART MOBILITY
FITSRUS: the Helsinki to
St Petersburg Smart Transport
Corridor, p26
0_TH214_EU_COVER.indd 1 04/06/2014 14:55

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