Overview
Traffic congestion in urban areas has a significant impact on the quality of transport systems, and, in particular, of surface collective transport (CT). Buses are directly affected by the congestion of traffic and therefore fall behind. They are often considered less reliable than other public transport vehicles. In addition, these chronic disturbances have direct consequences to strengthen at the same time the competitiveness of the particular vehicle relative to shared transport systems.
Even if dedicated bus lanes can limit the impact of chronic disturbances of urban traffic, these potentially results in an inefficient use of road space for other vehicles. In addition, in some cases and for specific sites, the creation of bus lanes is not feasible. The management of these chronic crises affecting the CT network has still not been satisfactorily resolved and it is necessary to use innovative techniques traffic management to improve the quality of the CT network.
The objective of the ADViCe project is to provide the feasibility study of a particularly innovative traffic control strategy: the dynamic allocation of lanes. The challenge was to assess ex-ante the performance of dynamic bus corridors for the potential sites for future experimentation. Thus, after a state-of-the-art of existing dynamic road management experimentation, the characterization of potential candidate sites can be formalized.
The pilots have been tested in the agglomerations of Lyon and Grenoble.
Funding
Results
The first year of the project allowed to complete the study on the identification of use cases. A state of the art on the dynamics of road management systems was conducted. The various examples were analysed and characterized through the different dimensions identified: site geometry, traffic scenarios, regulatory aspects, etc.
Regarding the technological aspect, a first system architecture has been proposed. The various sensors and airborne equipment systems have been identified and analysed in relation to the needs of the advice system. The second year of the project was devoted to warning devices.
New signalling solutions (variable message signs and luminous studs) were defined and tests on their understanding by users with pictures retouched real situations were also carried out.
Initial work has mainly focused on the analytical study of triggering dynamic bus lanes and on the evaluation of a multimodal urban boulevard.
These analytical findings identify areas of application systems advice. In addition, they have helped change the dynamics traffic simulation platform SymuVia to reproduce the effects of dynamic bus lanes. The simulation of a realistic site is now possible and is under investigation.