The main responsibilities of Intelligent Transport
Systems are to make traffic safer, more efficient, and more
environmentally friendly. The 19th ITS World Congress will take
place in Vienna in October 2012, and already, Austrian businesses
are working hard to put these theories into practice.
While road traffic produced more than 18 per cent of the
greenhouse gases in the EU, only 0.5% of the CO2
emissions came from European rail. Across Europe, traffic jams cost
about 1.5 per cent of the GDP every year. These figures make one
thing clear: moving traffic off the roads is both necessary and
possible, because the capacities of alternative modes of transport
have life in them yet. IT-supported systems can contribute hugely
to traffic information and regulation. Transport technology (also
called Intelligent Transport Services - ITS) increases the flow of
traffic and, as much as possible, can inform users individually
with real-time traffic updates, and alternative routes or modes of
transport.
Personalised traffic information is a key theme at the annual ITS
World Congresses. The 19thITS World Congress will be held from 22
to 26 October 2012 in Vienna, under the header ITS Vienna 2012
- Smarter on the way. In keeping with this slogan, the
advantages of ITS for private and commercial users are at the heart
of the event. Around a thousand technical lectures will be held,
dedicated to three core areas of ITS: providing efficiency, safety,
and environmental sustainability in transport. The congress was
first held in Paris in 1994 and rotates annually between Europe,
Asia, and America.
Consumers in the Spotlight
Host BMVIT (Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation, and
Technology) expects at the conference around 3,000 experts from the
fields of IT, telecommunications, and automation, and a further
7,000 visitors to Vienna. At the accompanying industry exhibition,
300 companies from roughly 65 countries will display their
cutting-edge developments in areas such as driver assistance,
traffic management, and navigation. Standardisation procedures on a
transnational level are also an important issue.
In the last ten years, the BMVIT has invested around 100 million
Euros in the research and development of modern mobility
technologies, giving the economy the kick-start it needed. "After
15 years of research, the task now is to bring ITS into the real
world - to bring it to transport users and the transport business,"
says Doris Bures, Minister of Transport, Innovation and Technology.
The necessary technologies are, for the most part, available.
"Austria has a very strong ITS industry, with businesses at the
front line of the international scene," claims Bures. The 19th ITS
World Congress offers the domestic economy and the ITS community
the chance to present their pioneering roles in the area of
transport technology.
On behalf of the BMVIT, AustriaTech, the federal ITS agent,
coordinates the interests of the country, and is responsible for a
large-scale programme demonstrating the most recent technical
developments. Experts from the eSafety Forum have assessed the
potential capabilities of intelligent transport technologies for
the years 2011-2020. They estimate that traffic jams can be reduced
by 15 per cent, and that energy efficiency of transport can be
improved by 20 per cent. In professional circles, the expectations
of the field of transport safety are even higher, with talk of
reducing fatalities and serious injuries by 30 per cent each.
Route Planner for Austria
With regard to climate targets and reducing CO2
emissions, all possibilities are being explored.
Verkehrsauskunft Österreich (VAO) is a very
significant project, creating the technical and organisational
principles for a multimodal real-time information system.
Coordinated by Asfinag and sponsored by climate and energy funds,
this gives users easy access to travel information about public
transport. In a study by Gallup titled "Future of Transport"
(October 2010), in which 25,570 EU citizens were interviewed, 53
per cent claimed that they used their car most for everyday
transport, while 22% used public transport. In cities, the
proportion of public transport users rose to 37 per cent, and for
comparison, Austria is at 20 per cent, with Vienna at 36 per
cent.
VAO should be available in its first version for the World
Congress, and it will go into live operation in 2013. The aim is to
create an inclusive and unified transport information service for
the whole of Austria, which can also recommend so-called multimodal
routes. It should integrate public and private transport, and thus
make transport users aware of alternative forms of transport.
Experts are working on a multimodal, unified transport system on a
European level too. As part of the project In-Time, six
European cities are providing traveller information on a uniform
interface. Travellers can receive a comprehensive route planner
covering all transport possibilities in the cities of Brno,
Bucharest, Florence, Munich, Oslo, and Vienna. The main aim of the
project is to reduce noise and CO2 emissions, as well as
accelerating public transport.
The project ITSworks carried out a study on the effects
of multimodal transport system, using the example of
AnachB.at, which is available for Vienna, and the
provinces of Lower Austria and Burgenland. According to the results
of the study, at best, the use of an Intelligent Transport System
could reduce car routes, mileage, and CO2 emissions by 6
per cent.
There is already a range of apps on the market for iPhone and/or
Android mobiles, which deliver information to transport users: the
spectrum reaches from the timetable information service
qando, across Asfinag's traffic information service
Unterwegs, for which the company put up 350 webcams along
the motorways, over to the mobility app Numo Wien.
According to project partners Fluidtime and Frührot, they combine
"everything you need to move forwards in Vienna". Amongst other
things, they contain information about public transport,
City-bikes, taxi ranks, short stay parking zones, and tickets. "A
good start," says Martin Russ, managing director at AustriaTech,
"but not enough. Traveller information needs to be available in
sufficient quantity and quality, and be on hand in real-time."
Traffic Information on a Database
The foundation for interconnected services is called the
Graphenintegrationsplattform (GIP), and it combines all of
the databases and geographic information systems, in which the
transport infrastructure in the public sector is controlled and
collected. GIP identifies the entirety of software, data, and
policy, which work together for the industry and for the
modernisation of transport analysis.
The aim of the project is to build up an integrated regional
reference system for the transport network in Austria. The digital
map of transport links should include all modes of transport, and
transport information and management should be recent, reliable,
and should be operated on one common platform. Safety-relevant
implementation, for example accident data, should also be on the
up-to-date map and can be drawn upon as a reference. The
infrastructure operators arrange the continuous updating of the
database. The allocated databases will be synchronised at regular
intervals, and added to a map of Austria. Information about the
urban area will also be shown on the GIP, as will information about
car parks, car-sharing places, and public transport stations and
stops. In order to efficiently avoid traffic jams, the lower order
road network will also be integrated in, i.e., motorways, main
roads, and suburban or rural roads will all be considered as
options. In the future, navigation systems from commercial
suppliers will be able to access the information hosted on open
platforms, and thus can be improved. In contrast to the partly
redundant applications, which are available today, the mobility
services of the future will access one common database, and
"communicate with one another".
Queries:
Mr Martin Russ, Managing Director AustriaTech, martin.russ@austriatech.org
Ms Rita Michlits, Communications Manager ITS
Vienna 2012, rita.michlits@austriatech.org
T +43 1 2633444-43, F +43 1 2633444-10, M +43 676 6150006
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