Overview
Intelligent Transportation Systems will make a significant contribution to sustain our mobility over the long term. The deployment for intelligent approaches designed to meet the increasing traffic demand while more efficiently utilising the existing infrastructure and resources are the central challenges for the future. The consistent provision of reliable and up-to-date traffic information transmitted to all traffic participants is vital in this context. In the scope of the project “ITS Austria West” the future challenges are addressed in a new and innovative way in the federal province of Upper Austria and Salzburg.
An integrated platform of traffic information is a current and reliable information backbone and the basis for modern traffic management systems. The aim of the project “ITS Austria West” is to implement a traffic simulation environment.
The most important factors of success are to integrate all relevant data and to filter irrelevant information of different sources, to collect it, to process it and to deliver the results to the centralized system via defined interfaces as a predefined data type. In doing so, strict standards need to be be respected. A further requirement for the new intelligent transportation systems is to ensure compatibility with other systems in the neighboring regions. E.g. in Bavaria the online-service "Bayerninfo.de“ was implemented. The project “ITS Vienna Region” was initiated by the federal provinces Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland some years ago.
Funding
Results
An independent and reliable information system is the essential basis for efficient traffic control. Therefore, the transportation departments of the provinces Upper Austria and Salzburg build up their own intelligent transportation systems and do not buy services run by commercial, profit-oriented companies by spring 2014. It is the only way to guarantee the public domain and free availability of high quality traffic information for all citizens, the data security and the efficient operation of the infrastructure used.
Innovation aspects
The federal states of Upper Austria and Salzburg are deploying such fully integrated intelligent transportation systems to be able to deliver the traffic information of their roads to the centralised Austrian Traffic Data Platform “Verkehrsauskunft Österreich (VAO)”, which is a new national and multimodal “Advanced Traveler Information Service” in Austria.
Technical Implications
The approach in Upper Austria was to implement a traffic simulation environment and to integrate online-sensors at roadside together with probe vehicle data (in the German-speaking area: Floating Car Data) to be able to simulate the current situation on the lower priority roads of the Federal States of Upper Austria, Salzburg and Tyrol on the basis of real-time data. This will provide the basis upon which applications of modern traffic management, traffic planning and adaptive traffic control can be built, which ensure the mobility of the population and economy through effective measures and reduce traffic pollution as well.
Policy implications
The free availability of high quality traffic information can change the behavior of transport users and fleet dispatchers in their choice of mode or mean of transport, their route and starting time of their trip, which can lead to less congestion and a modal shift. These changes will have positive effects on the environment.