Helping transport professionals fast track their success
There are a number of intelligent traffic applications being progressively developed and introduced to better manage traffic and leading to the new era of smart traffic operations – what I am calling iTraffic 2.0, the next generation. (if Apple can have the iPhone and iPad!)
This traffic problem is expressed in the following equation:
Is management of Australian motorway traffic getting smarter?
Over the past five years references to traffic congestion by political and non-transport commentators in Australia has been increasing. The recently released Henry Review of Taxation included the need to ‘increase the efficiency of use and investment in roads by a program of road reforms that includes greater use of road user charges, including congestion charges’. The national government has deferred consideration of this recommendation.
The demand for transport is a derived demand, an economic term, which refers to demand for one good or service in one sector occurring as a result of demand from another. Users of transport are primarily consuming the service not because of its direct benefits, but because they wish to access other services. Transport demand … Read more
This FHWA Handbook provides an overview of the Full-Function Service Patrol (FFSP) for traffic incident response and management and describes desired program characteristics from the viewpoint of an agency that is responsible for funding, managing, and operating the services. It provides guidelines and rules of thumb for operational characteristics, sponsorship, level of service, number of … Read more
A FHWA publication provides guidance to practitioners on effective strategies to mitigate the effects of congestion at signalised intersections.
The scope is limited to single intersections and does not address network-level strategies. The strategies are defined in terms of their underlying objective.
Motor Mania is a cartoon made by the Walt Disney Company in 1950. In this madcap motoring animation, Goofy transforms into a Mr Hyde-type split personality, when he gets behind the wheel.
The cartoon shows how the character, as the pleasant, friendly and good-natured ‘Mr Walker’, undergoes a change in personality to the belligerent ‘Mr Wheeler’ when he gets behind the wheel of his car.
[click to go to website] A new map published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and published in the World Bank’s World Development Report 2009, measures urbanisation from the new perspective of travel time to 8,500 major cities. By using travel-time as a unit of measurement, the map of Travel Time to Major Cities … Read more
>As part of Melbourne’s $1.4 billion M1 upgrade project, a new traffic management system is being developed to effectively tackle congestion on the key freeway.
Victorian Roads Minister Tim Pallas has announced the $14 million contract to design the software for the new traffic management system has been awarded to Queensland company Transmax.
“The system is unique in Australia and will deliver significant improvements to the operation of the freeway, used by more than 160,000 motorists every day,” Mr Pallas said.
Optimising capacity of a road network through traffic incident management is a key strategy to managing congestion. With the realisation that it is not feasible or affordable to build our way out of congestion has come an interest in finding smarter ways of maintaining a given level of service.
However, congestion management may not be a core issue for all organisations involved in network operations and incident management. Public safety agencies are concerned about collecting evidence and fire and rescue cultures have a strong worker safety bias – and getting traffic moving is not a primary objective.
Large urban areas are facing an increasing challenge of mobility (congestion), safety and environmental impacts due to traffic incidents.
Traffic incidents are estimated to account for about 25% of traffic congestion and bad weather another 15% (FHWA 2007). Hence congestion due to traffic incidents and bad weather can be as much as 40% of the total congestion.
Traffic incidents can have significant impacts on road users and the community. Injured people need to be recovered quickly from crashes and the potential for secondary incidents needs to be avoided. The safety or emergency responders and traffic controllers are at risk in moving traffic conditions.