Optimization of transport flows both in urban and in rural/ semi-rural region
Overview
Greater Manchester has 2.7 million inhabitants, and counts over 5.6 million journeys across its public transport network every day. Greater Manchester will take advantage of existing sensing infrastructure for transport monitoring, such as automatic traffic counters, CCTV, a network of Bluetooth sensor, ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition), C-ITS infrastructure, video analytics sensors.
Priorities
⦁ Increase the use of sustainable transport to reduce the negative impacts of car use
⦁ Reduce greenhouse emissions and pollutants emitted by motorized traffic
Actions
TANGENT maps multi-modal traffic flow and assesses the causes of congestion to identify ‘pinch points’ in the network. Furthermore, it contributes to improving travel choices, assists in providing customer journey information and encourages sustainable mobility through comprehensive multimodal mobility information, traffic predictions and route recommendations, delivered to users and transport operators.
Through the “Smart Network Load Balance” service, TANGENT is contributing to optimizing transport both in urban areas and rural/semi-rural regions in Greater Manchester by balancing demand and supply across different modes. It suggests different strategies and measures to transport authorities and operators, including alternative traffic signal timings, variable speed limits, re-routing, pricing, incentives, with a particular interest in promoting sustainable modes.
TANGENT tools and services applied to the case studies
Service 1 – Enhanced information service for multimodal transport management
Current Status: This service will provide key stakeholders across Greater Manchester with one common operational picture (COP) of the multi-modal transport network.
Future Status of the Network: A visualisation as part of the ‘Predictive Information’ functionality has also been proposed for the future status of the network. Harnessing the predictive capabilities of the TANGENT tools, this will enable Control Centre staff to be able to efficiently assess the impacts of incidents, events and disruption across all transport modes. Accessing predictive information about the future status of the network would be a significant enhancement of current operational tools and would improve operational capabilities in terms of stakeholder engagement and inform interventions.
Service 2 – Real-time traffic management services
Synchronisation of PT and TC: It is proposed to (virtually) assess the impact of synchronising public transport (PT) and Traffic Control (TC), with a particular emphasis on the coordination of the bus network.
Informing Transport Passengers: This service will aim to assess how better balancing the supply of PT (bus and Metrolink in this case) can optimise the performance of the overall network. Specifically, this will seek to act on information produced through the Smart Network Load Balance to inform passengers through various channels, e.g., social media, VMS, vehicular communication and journey planning applications.
Service 3 – Transport network optimisation for Transport Authorities
Simulation of pre-defined scenarios: To test this service, two relevant pre-defined scenarios for simulation were selected. In order to further support long-term strategic ambitions of increasing modal shift to PT, for ‘What-if scenario 1’ it is proposed to simulate an increase in the capacity and frequency of selected bus services for specified key routes / services within the modelled area. For ‘What-if scenario 2’ it is proposed to simulate an increase in the penetration rate of connected vehicles with V2X communication capabilities. Testing this scenario will assess impacts on network performance, considering dynamic routing and adaptive signal control. Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory (GLOSA) applications will be assessed, building upon some work already developed through another Horizon 2020 project, ‘Levitate’ (https://levitate-project.eu/).
Rennes
Fostering intermodal cooperation of passenger and freight transport in urban areas
Lisbon
Integrated urban and interurban transport management with C-ITS
Greater manchester
Optimization of transport flows both in urban and in rural/ semi-rural region
Athens
Future transport management with CAVS – Virtual
