CORRIDOR PROJECTS

ITS Corridors

ITS Corridors are sections of highways with connecting services enabling electronic communication between vehicle and infrastructure (V2I). V2I allows amongst others warnings of dangerous road situations. ITS corridors relate to the European Commission-led policy by supporting development of ITS on Ten-T corridors via specific funding (Connecting Europe facilities – CEF).

CorridorProjects01

MedTIS – MEDITERRANEAN CORRIDOR DEPLOYING TRAVELLER INFORMATION SERVICES

MedTIS is a deployment project with objective to implement Road Safety Solutions, Traffic Management Services and Traveller Information Services on the TEN-T Mediterranean Corridor.

MedTIS takes onboard TEN-T priorities and EC policy objectives to deliver high-level Travel Time Services and enhanced Traveller Information services including road user awareness to European travellers.

Along a 8.000 km Corridor MedTIS Action involves 4 Member States from the European Union: France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. 27 road operators from these 4 countries are in charge of the onsite deployments of services and systems.

MedTIS supports the following objectives: improving the interoperability, continuity and seamless mobility in the EU, with a particular attention to cross border sections -on which deployment activities will enable the enforcement of cross-border Traffic Management Plans- and urban-interurban interfaces; Improving road safety on strategic sections (i.e. tunnels) including cross-border interfaces Improving the harmonisation of services across Europe from an end user perspective; Improving the operational excellence and cost-efficiency from a road operator / traffic manager perspective; better integrate the increasing traffic to maintain a high-level network efficiency, especially bottlenecks and cross-border sections; maintain the high level of safety on the considered network regarding the traffic increase (namely Heavy Good Vehicle).

URSA MAJOR: service Improvements on the Major TEN-T Road Axes in Europe

URSA MAJOR 2 (UM2) is an initiative focussing on freight traffic on the TEN-T road network in a corridor linking North-Sea ports with the Ruhr / Rhine area and metropolitan areas in southern Germany, Northern Italy and the Mediterranean, across the freight sensitive Alps crossings in Austria and Switzerland.

UM2 members are the relevant road operators from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Switzerland and Austria are included in their capacity as transit countries.

The UM2 corridor represents one of the major TEN-T road axes in Europe. With a total network length of 8700 km it has an average traffic load (average daily traffic – ADT) of 56000 vehicles of which on an ordinary working day 22% (12300) are goods vehicles.

According to projections produced for the German motorway scheme the freight traffic volume is expected to grow by 55 % between 2007 and 2025. In total approx. Today, 27 Billion ton kilometres are transported over the corridor.

Improving services for international freight traffic along the mentioned corridors is the main European Added Value of UM2. International freight between EU Member States is one of the main pillars for a Single Europe.

ITS deployments covered by UM2 address at least one of the following topics:

  • Enhancement of truck parking services
  • Support for truck navigation services
  • Remove bottlenecks and congestion
  • Safety improvements for freight transport on the TENT-T road

Crocodile

Within CROCODILE public authorities, road administrations and traffic information service providers of in total 13 European Member States are committed to set up and operate a data exchange infrastructure based on DATEX II.

That infrastructure will be used to exchange data and information between all involved stakeholders, including private partners, with the goal to provide harmonised cross-border traveller information services along the whole corridor.

A specific focus within CROCODILE will be on safety-related and truck parking information services.

The CROCODILE corridor project succeeds the previous projects EasyWay and EasyWay 2. CROCODILE involves the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to ensure data exchange and service provision along three main road corridors:

  • Baltic – Adriatic
  • Rhine – Danube
  • Orient-East-Med

Participating Member States include Austria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania and Slovenia, as well as Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovakia in the status of associated Member States.

CROCODILE will directly contribute to Commission Delegated Regulation(EU) No 886/2013of 15 May 2013 with regard to data and procedures for provision, where possible, of road safety-related minimum universal traffic information free of charge to users as well as Commission Delegated Regulation(EU) No 885/2013of 15 May 2013 with regard to the provision of information services for safe and secure parking places for trucks and commercial vehicles both supplementing Directive 2010/40/EUof the European Parliament and of the Council.

Based on the EasyWay Deployment Guidelines (especially on DTX-DG01 – DATEX II) CROCODILE will mainly focus on the implementation of DATEX II notes for data availability and exchange as mentioned delegated regulations.

To ensure data availability additional data collection infrastructure, relevant for road-safety and truck-parking information services, will be deployed on specific road sections along the CROCODILE corridor for collecting data needed to detect events or identify conditions.

To ensure access to data CROCODILE Member States and partners will setup access points in accordance to mentioned delegated regulations. Finally exchanged data will be integrated in end-user services by CROCODILE partners as well as interested ITS Associations

Arc Atlantique

The Arc Atlantique III Action aims at implementing a series of ITS projects (interventions) on two of the nine multimodal corridors – the Atlantic and North Sea Mediterranean CEF corridors, with 87% of the investment on the CEF core network (of which 13% on urban nodes and urban-interurban interfaces) and 13% on critical elements of the comprehensive network.

The Arc Atlantique is an existing ITS corridor implemented by 7 Member States: Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia), Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.

Since inception in 2013, the 17 partners comprising strategic road authorities and road operators have formed strong working relationships built on the common objective of investing in ITS on the Arc Atlantique network to achieve improvements in network efficiency, safety and environmental performance, whilst broadening harmonisation and interoperability of ITS services across the network. In doing so, they want to support the EU in meeting its objective to implement an efficient single transport area.

These partners have identified the need to continue for a third phase of the corridor. The deployments scheduled for the period 2017 – 2020 will impact approximately 29,000 km of the TEN-T Core network (including urban nodes) and supporting comprehensive network with a working programme amounting to 65 m€ investment. A key feature of this Action will be the coordinated implementation of proven harmonised Traffic Management and Traffic Information Services, compliant with the EasyWay Deployment Guidelines 2012. Other elements will be greater significance of knowledge exchange as well as the introduction of C-ITS service deployments.

NEXT-ITS 3

The NEXT-ITS 3 project (2018-2020) covers the Northern part of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor, including the core road network and the key comprehensive network links. The project connects North and East Germany and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) to the Central and West European road networks through the Northern sections of the Scandinavian – Mediterranean CEF Corridor.

The Northern sections connect with the North-Sea – Baltic CEF Corridor in Berlin, Bremen and Helsinki and to the Orient – East Med CEF Corridor in Bremen, Rostock and Berlin.

The aim of the project is to enhance corridor and network performance by full-scale deployment of ITS services that ensure interoperability and continuity of services, support harmonization, and increase the cost-efficiency in the operation of traffic management.

The ITS Services concerned in NEXT-ITS 3 are the following:

  • Information services, including HGV parking services, giving the road users a possibility to make good decisions
  • Traffic management services to steer and regulate the traffic flow
  • Incident Management to restore normal traffic flow as quickly as possible
  • Utilisation of connected vehicles in traffic management
  • Data collection through various sources of information as well as data mining and fusion
  • Traffic Management Centres play a key role in the service provision, regardless of service

The deployments carried out aim at supporting the provision of the above-mentioned services. Thereby, the partners have identified activities that will:

Improve performance in the traffic management centres on the corridor
This is achieved through technical and organizational development of Traffic Management Centres and installation of new innovative systems with high performance and quality as required by modern and efficient traffic management.
Improve the quality of services through higher quality of dataThis is achieved through improved data management in Traffic Management Centres and adding new and innovative ways to acquire data, including data fusion.
Extend the coverage of services along the corridor – Filling gaps in service provision and service quality

The availability to services meeting the minimum level of service requirements differs along the corridor. Attention is given to extending the service to cover and upgrading service quality and service level on sections with particular needs; critical spots, urban interfaces etc.

The activities included in NEXT-ITS 3 will fill gaps in the corridor network performance as well as improve the cost-efficiency in the operation of traffic management and thereby contribute with efforts to build a European integrated road transport system through CEF-corridors. The project will in addition contribute to know-how development and actively engage in the work aiming at European harmonization and knowledge building through evaluation.