Highlights

Activity 2 prepared and released its annual deliverables for 2018. The two deliverables released are the “Achievements Report on collecting best practice in ITS deployment 2018” and the “Stakeholder Liaison Report 2018”. More information on these reports and links to download them can be found below.

Sub-activity 4.1 has so far provided several frameworks to define and assess the quality of data, information and services in various domains of ITS.

The current task is to touch on the so-called Optimum Quality, exploring quality aspects in terms of what is most cost-efficient in terms of socio-economic benefit/cost ratios, and looking for different operating environments.

ITS Romania together with POLITEHNICA University Timisoara will organize the third edition of the ITS Romania Congress on 16-17 May 2019 in Timisoara, at the Conference Center of the University. This international event is endorsed by the Transport Ministry and Timisoara Municipality and is set to be the main national platform to exchange information and knowledge between academia and industry, technology suppliers and users, national and European initiatives.

Leaders of the European ITS Platform were hosted in Milano to step forward in the European cooperation. Several subjects were under discussion:

For years, speeding has been recognised as one of the main contributing factors to deaths on our roads. Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) will have a huge impact on traffic safety. TN-ITS GO (Transport Network Intelligent Transport Systems) is a Connecting Europe Facility project that contributes to ISA’s success by deploying standardized advanced exchange and update mechanisms for digital map data. TN-ITS GO is planned to be a key part of the digital infrastructure of 15 European Member States and road operators by 2022.

In February 2018, the partners of the CROCODILE corridor have started to elaborate in detail the current status of supply and demand of cross-border traffic information exchange within corridor from Poland down to Slovenia. An initial workshop in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and subsequent coordination meetings were used to confirm certain assumptions, but have also revealed new aspects and viewpoints on the matching of supply and demand of cross-border traffic data.

From detecting to signaling

The results of the first phase show that the tyre pressure measuring system is reliable enough to inform interested parties about the detected deficiencies. As a result, Rijkswaterstaat started the second phase of the pilot in December 2018. During this phase participating companies will get a message if a deficiency is observed in the tyre(s) of one of their vehicles. At the moment already 40 companies are participating with a total of 10.000 vehicles.

ΙΤS Hellas, the “Hellenic Association for the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems”, organized its 4^th Conference entitled: “Intelligent Transport Systems in Greece: Latest developments” on Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19 December 2018 in the premises of the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport in Athens, Greece.

The European News Bulletin of Aiscat (issue November/December 2018) reports a 3 pages survey on ITS Forum 2018.

Since its establishment back in 1966, AISCAT (Associazione Italiana Società Concessionarie Autostrade e Trafori) has been active with collecting, comparing and presenting at a common table for exchange the experiences and needs of Italy's toll motorway and tunnel operators.

SAVE THE DATE

High-level Conference “Multimodal transport – towards the future”

in the afternoon of 26 February 2019

Hotel Crowne Plaza Bruxelles, Rue Gineste 3, 1210 Brussels

Photo: H. Roos/IM Nederland

Drivers of salvage vehicles in the Netherlands can send electronic safety warnings to road users. When they are working on the road, they can use an app on their smart phone to send a message, which is then forwarded to the road users.

Road users thus will be warned for potential dangerous situations before they reach the spot of the incident. At this moment the system only works for road users that use Flistmeister, but the intention is that other apps and navigation systems will follow.

Let’s start saying who is Peter Postman: he is  for sure a the frequent user of Trans-European Road Network who needs information and services, he is the one that through having better ITS services he can contribute to making European roads safer and more sustainable.

The proceedings of the European ITS Forum are available online on the website of the Forum and in the YouTube channel of the European ITS Platform.

In order to allow delegates and interested parties to properly store the web-links to different parts of the proceedings, a fact sheet was produced. Through this page you can access: Summaries for each session, Presentations to be downloaded, Opening speeches, Videos (impressions of the first day and collection of pictures).

The proceedings of the European ITS Forum are available online on the website of the Forum. You can access it by following this link.

Through this page you can access:

Around 300 experts from 21 different countries met on 14/15 November 2018 to exchange views on 'Traffic Management in a changing world' during the ITS Forum 2018. This Forum was organised by the European ITS Platform and the ITS Corridor projects and was hosted by Rijkswaterstaat in the LEF Future Centre in Utrecht (The Netherlands).

Opening by Dutch Minister

Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to the Netherlands. And, especially, welcome to the LEF future centre here at Rijkswaterstaat.

As you can see, this is no ordinary venue for a conference. Its layout, design and setting all invite dialogue, conversation and encounter. This centre was designed for breakthroughs – to achieve results. And that’s what we’re going to do in the next two days.

The coordinator of the European ITS Platform contributed to the opening ceremony of the European ITS Forum held, in the Utrecht premises of Rijkswaterstaat. The text of the speech is available here in the following:

Honourable Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management,

Dear Representatives of European and National Authorities,

Dear Coordinators of CEF ITS Corridor projects,

New services, new actors looming on the scenario, an entire Europe is now ready far beyond the starting blocks for the development of intelligent infrastructures, connected cars and (in perspective) autonomous vehicles that can facilitate sustainability, environmental protection, improving the quality of life and services for EU citizens with their cross-border or national journeys, providing the energy to revive the economy of Member States and create new jobs.

Smart roads of the future are crossing in Utrecht (Le strade intelligenti del futuro si incrociano ad Utrecht): this is the title of the leading article published by the Italian magazine LeStrade in the issue of April 2018. The article takes the opinion of Roberto Arditi, addressing, on behalf of the platform, some of the key topics of the road technology in Europe.

In spite of a further increase in traffic on the motorway A 3, traffic on one of the most congested motorway sections in Germany is now to flow better. Tarek Al-Wazir, Hessian Minister of Economics, Energy, Transport and Regional Development, Steffen Bilger, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure and Gerd Riegelhuth, Vice President of Hessen Mobil, pressed the start button for an important expansion of intelligent traffic control on the motorways in Hessen on the 8^th August 2018.