This page presents the Highlights of the European ITS Platform published in 2017. You may use the table of contents below to skip directly to the highlight of your interest and use the “back to the table of contents” link at the end of each highlight to return to the Table of Contents.
Table of Contents
14/12/2017
On the 26th and 27th of September 2017 an Ursa Major 2 workshop was held at the World Port Center of Rotterdam (NL). The workshop was called ‘from Systems to Services’ and focused on the shift in approach regarding how the Dutch handle traffic problems in urban areas.
As the potential to expand the road network as well as the deployment of traditional ITS are nowadays almost saturated in the Netherlands, the focus has shifted towards optimizing the use of existing systems. The aim of the workshop was not only to inform attendants about this new approach, but to also allow for a critical reflection and discussion on this topic in order for all attendants to truly learn and be able to take relevant lessons home with them to possibly implement in their organization or country.
48 people attended the event from the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Switzerland! Both days of the workshop allowed for a lot of interesting discussions and opportunities to share knowledge and ideas, thanks to the interactive sessions moderated by LEF facilitator Marinda Hall.
In addition, a boat tour was organized through the Port of Rotterdam to allow the attendants to get better acquainted with each other as well as with the unique area that is the Port of Rotterdam.
We’ve received a lot of positive responses from the attendants and overall the workshop was seen as great success.
A workshop report has been drafted for all interested parties. Please find below links to the presentations from the keynote speeches:
– Keynote Serge van Dam, Rijkswaterstaat
– Keynote Roger Demkes, on behalf of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment
– Keynote Roger Demkes, Traffic Company
An overview of the projects that were discussed can be downloaded here
Click here to return to the table of contents
11/12/2017
26 is the number of Beneficiaries that are active with their own actions to cooperate within European ITS Platform. If you deem challenging this number, you need to consider that many of them are concretely supported by a number of national implementing bodies and affiliated entities. All of these organizations are cooperating together to the achievement of the project objectives. We are, in fact, speaking of the platform of authorities and operators of the trans-European road network, all key European players who are working together towards a smarter and more efficient mobility: a goal which will be achieved through the coordination of large-scale technology deployments in the trans-European Corridors.
To get jointly prepared for the challenging administrative exercise, 20 officers delegated by Beneficiaries were present to the meeting of EU EIP administrative group held in London last December 1st.
During the meeting, a timeline for the deployment of the administrative action was defined and approved, in order to meet the best possible fit of needs from Beneficiaries and Implementing Bodies, according to national procedures and guidelines proposed by INEA.
The administrative group has a huge duty: three key administrative actions are expected in the forthcoming months:
a) Action Status Report 2018
b) Intermediate financial statement consequent to the end of the second reporting period
c) Support to INEA towards the Mid-Term Review exercise
The Mid-Term Review is a key point for the evolution of CEF projects. In this phase, Beneficiaries and European Institutions have the opportunity to reshape the project in order to make possible that all Beneficiaries and activities can perform in line with expected results.
30/11/2017
All over the European Union National Access Points are currently being established in accordance with the Delegated Regulations. Despite being available in numerous Member States, the problem still remains that providers have shown little interest so far in using NAPs for providing information about their data and services.
During the CROCODILE 2 Technical Workshop in Budapest on 23rd November 2017, held in cooperation with EU EIP, ten Member States used the opportunity to present the present state of their National Access Points and thus create a common big picture on the European status quo. The participants then discussed in four groups what factors make a NAP successful (i.e. data and services providers using it), what currently prevents the NAPs from being successful and measures can be set towards a successful NAP (e.g. dissemination, encouragement, penalties, etc.).
The discussions revealed that NAP operators indeed have to “provide access to the National Access Point”. The what’s-in-it-for-you is not sufficiently communicated to data and service providers with the most important factor being the possibility for free advertisement of data and services. In addition to good promotion and to battle reluctancy, NAPs shall also be comprehensive and interconnected throughout Europe. While this is clearly envisaged for the immediate future, the different setup modes of the NAPs (i.e. actual data vs. metadata) could hamper the interconnection. This could be handled through implementing a common API for accessing the NAPs, combined with consolidating the NAP features and functionalities as well as their organisational role within the complex field of European traveller information services.
The workshop participants rated that taking action to change the situation of the NAPs is both urgent and important, so the next steps will focus on harmonising the interconnection of the NAPs in order to make them more attractive as well as taking an active step towards data and service providers and provide them with access to the National Access Points.
Read more about NAPs in Europe
29/11/2017
The EU ITS Platform (EU EIP) project organised a workshop for lessons learned in C-ITS corridor pilots on 22nd November 2017. The workshop was organised together with the C-Roads Platform. Soon after the announcement, the workshop was fully booked, including the extra seats which were obtained.
More than 50 experts from 17 European countries representing road authorities and operators, the European Commission, OEMs, suppliers, technology & service providers, research institutes and ITS associations joined the workshop at INEA in Brussels.
The guest speakers provided information about the current framework of C-ITS deployment on EU-level supported by the C-Roads Platform.
Furthermore, representatives from the “frontrunner initiatives” (NordicWay, C-ITS Corridor, SCOOP@F) and involved stakeholder organisations presented and discussed lessons learned from the first pilots.
The full report from the workshop will be published in January 2018.Mikko Tarkiainen – VTT
Presentations:
27/11/2017
EU EIP is working to ‘Facilitate automated driving’ preparing road authorities and operators to make decisions on facilitating automated driving and automating their own core business.
A new report named “Draft road map and action plan to facilitate automated driving on TEN road network” was produced.
Download the report
The report summarizes the results of a successful workshop (more info here) concerning “Facilitating Connected & Automated Driving” and aims at:
This deliverable gives an overview of the workshop, summarises the background material and presents the workshop results. It also takes forward the conclusions of the workshop results and presents the next steps to develop a roadmap and action plan for road operators.
The activity was performed by EU EIP through Sub-Activity 4.2 – Task 3.
Connected And Automated Driving is the title of the International Conference organized by ANAS and PIARC on the theme of the smart roads Friday 13 October to the hotel Quirinale in Rome.
Gianni Vittorio Armani, president of ANAS, the Italian national corporate body for the roads has opened the session. The European commissioner to the Transports, Violeta Bulc, has proposed a video message with which she has illustrated the importance that the European Commission reserves to the theme of the connected and autonomous vehicles, what premised for a secure and sustainable mobility.
The meeting was divided in four sessions: intelligent roads, intelligent cars, intelligent safety and intelligent transports, with the debate – coordinated by Domenico Crocco and Emanuela Poli – which was articulated on the followings themes:
According to the general manager Mario Nobile, the theme of Smart roads is to the attention of the Italian Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports. In fact the digital transformation of the infrastructures represents the possibility:
– to improve the roads quality, safety and use;
– to create tools that produce data and services which facilitate the mobility of people and freight;
– to facilitate and simplify the transport.
Armani has illustrated the Anas project on the smart roads, project that should fully be operational over the course of 4 years: already in 2018, 100 kilometers of highways will be completely enabled to the connection between vehicle and road. ANAS foresees an investment of 160 million in 3 years, that aims at the coverage of all the 3 thousand kilometers on the road axis Palermo-Mestre.
Roberto Arditi, president of the international committee on politics and programs for the road safety of the World association of the Road, in his own intervention he has spoken of the road safety tied up to the new technologies and, in his role of project manager of the European ITS Platform, he has explained that the experts of the European ITS Platform (EU EIP) they are active with specific activities both in sight of the connected vehicles that of the autonomous vehicles (particularly in the definition of the characteristics that roads are required to have to house adequately connected and autonomous vehicles). The road safety is a great success of the European Countries that, in their complex, drive the world improvement. Nevertheless 25.500 dead still represent a human tragedy and a social cost unbearable. Connected and autonomous vehicles assist and correct the human factor that is valued to have an impact for well over the 90% of the accidents. This is the safety reservoir in which we can draw on and the studies of sector tell us that the systems in commerce – already from the next 5 years – can allow a 50% improvement.
Insights
Isoradio has given a strong focus to the event, also publishing the article “Drives connected and automatic”. Also the intervention of Arditi has been taken up by the RAI, that has published an article from the title “To Reduce of 50% the road accidents” signed by Alberto Perotti.
The event has also had evidence on the printed paper. For instance ” La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno” has published the article from the title “Within 2019 the vehicles they will interact on the roads”.
The Italian version of this highlight was published by Autostradafacendo and it can be achieved following this link.
20/11/2017
EU EIP Evaluation New Report Template
The EU EIP Activity 5 Evaluation Activity has issued the standard EU EIP Evaluation Report Template for use by ITS Corridors and the wider ITS community. This template includes integral step by step guidance for reporting bodies and has been meticulously prepared by a dedicated taskforce comprising a wide range of European ITS Evaluation experts and implementing ITS Corridors currently funded under the CEF. It is user-friendly, universal and designed to help and support those evaluating projects within the ITS Corridors as well as the wider ITS community.
The common EU EIP Evaluation Report Template will also help to ensure, as far as possible, that the outputs and results extracted from the evaluation of multiple ITS implementations are both consistent and harmonized. ITS projects are funded by Member States as well as by the European Commission and it is acknowledged that some Member States will have their own requirements for presenting evaluation results. The template has been developed with this in mind and adoption of this common format for presenting results will help to ensure that results of similar implementations can be compared as well as assisting in the transferability of results between sites and providing European Added Value.
The EU EIP Evaluation Report Template is closely aligned to the previously defined ITS KPI definitions as well as the EC ITS Directive Priority Actions and other classificatory documents such as the Operating Environments. To ensure coherence, links are provided to all relevant reference material within the Template.
Adoption of this Template and provision of reports in this common format will support consistency and, furthermore, will help to ensure that periodic “global” EU EIP reporting on overall progress towards the EC objectives of reducing congestion and emissions and improving safety can be prepared in the most effective and meaningful way.
The definitive EU EIP Evaluation Report Template can be found here.
Promising technical innovations are in the news daily. Many of them will impact sooner or later road traffic management, which could improve safety and traffic flow. There is an increasing need of sharing knowledge about when innovations indeed will have impact on traffic management. Therefore the EU Leading Innovation Timeline of Rijkswaterstaat was introduced by Louis Hendriks in EU EIP early 2017. Several ITS expert sessions have been organized and it shows that discussing the year of impact is much appreciated because it helps to focus the dialog and it gives support to decision makers when and how to spend time and money regarding deployment of ITS for the daily operation of traffic management.
Louis Hendriks was interviewed by journalist Mr. Gordon about this timeline approach. An article of this interview is published in the annual Showcase 2018 of Intertraffic World Magazine.
Visit www.intertrafficworld.com or follow this link to download the article (page 12).
14/11/2017
During a special session at the Digital Transport Days under the Estonian EU Presidency, 8 November 2017 in Tallinn, participants of the EU EIP East West Corridor activity met with Mrs. Trautmann, coordinator of the North Sea Baltic Corridor project, and other representatives of the corridor. Main topic on the agenda was the so-called ITS flagship project, which will be launched in 2018 on the North Sea Baltic Corridor. Where traditionally the CEF corridors, such as the North Sea Baltic Corridor, are targeting investments in hard infrastructure (all modes), the aim of the ITS flagship project is to enhance the performance of the corridor by the harmonized implementation of ITS, which could be an example for the other CEF corridors as well. And this is where the East West Corridor (EWC) comes in. Over the last two years the EWC has built a cooperation community all along the North Sea – Baltic corridor and the north of the North Sea – Mediterranean corridor, executed a feasibility study based on real national plans and developed a road map for the deployment of ITS on the East West Corridor. It was concluded that the work carried out in the East West Corridor forms a solid basis for the start of the ITS flagship project and it was agreed that the North Sea Baltic corridor and EWC will closely cooperate in order to speed up the implementation of ITS on the North Sea Baltic corridor and possibly beyond.
24/10/2017
On November 23rd 2017 the two projects CROCODILE 2 and EU EIP jointly organize a workshop on the state-of-the-art of National Access Points in Central Europe. During the workshop 11 countries cooperating in the CROCODILE 2 project will discuss the current status of implementing National Access Points, following the adoption of the delegated regulations 885/2013, 886/2013 and 2015/962. Progress and challenges will be discussed, as well as the view of the service providers. In addition, a timeslot has been reserved to present and discuss the new delegated regulation on Multimodal Travel Information Services. Last but not least a presentation will be made on the Leading Innovation Timeline, a tool showing the penetration of new ICT technologies and its impact on traffic management.
The discussion will be led by members of the EU EIP activity 4.6, focusing on the monitoring and harmonization of National Access Points.
If you are interested to participate in this workshop, please send an e-mail to Wolfgang Kernstock or Luis Batista. The workshop will start at 9.00 and finish at 13.00. Participation is free of charge.
The Agenda of the event is available here.
A successful and effective URSA MAJOR 2 Stakeholder meeting was held on October 10th 2017 in Munich.
Stakeholders from the UM2 Memberstates (NL, IT, DE) and further European countries (i.a. AT, CH, SL) came together to discuss DATEX II interfaces and to exchange their experiences with the European Delegated Regulations, especially on (EU) 2015/962 on the provision of EU-wide real-time traffic information services.
Hosted by Autobahndirektion Südbayern, this workshop gave the opportunity for representatives of the European Commission, other Corridor projects like Crocodile, service providers and road operators to exchanged their role specific requirements on DATEX interfaces. Road operators showed their approaches in very informative presentations to the attentive audience. It turned out, that they often share the same visions, but use different approaches to solve similar problems. So this workshop helped a lot to collect knowledge and practices beyond their own world. On the other hand, service providers have a need for harmonised information, and they much obliged the workshop information about the different available data sources, which otherwise lacks in their daily business. The participants discussed and agreed in the need of a constant level of data quality (best of high value), but identified the broad variety and usage of different methods of location referencing as being a hinder for harmonisation.
An online demonstration of a Slovenian DATEX II interface brought some practical expertise to this meeting and perfectly rounded up this event.
The slides from the various presentations can be downloaded through the following links:
Detailed findings of the workshop will be available soon.
12/10/2017
The converging of traffic information systems has faced its first tangible and large-scale enhancement on end user information level. Slovenian and Austrian motorway operators DARS and ASFINAG have effectively teamed up in order to deliver infomation about events and roadworks across the border on both their traffic information systems. This represents a major step forward in terms of provinding enhanced traveller information to end users. The data exchange is enabled by using the DATEX II standard, thereby providing proof on its viability towards upgrading and enhancing exisiting end user inforation channels.
A next step will include the extension of the processes in order to incorporate more Member States of the CROCODILE 2 project environment. First discussions between Hungary, Slovenia and Austria have already started.
Visit www.promet.si for more information.
10/10/2017
At this Workshop, representatives from major European C-ITS Corridor projects and involved stakeholder organisations will present and discuss lessons learned from the first pilots and deployment initiatives.
EU EIP C-ITS workshop is organised together with the C-Roads Platform and it is a follow-up to the ‘C-ITS Deployment is underway’ workshop which was co-organized by the Amsterdam Group and CODECS on 14.02.2017 in Schiphol.
Please register here for the EU EIP C-ITS event: : Registration to the event is closed. The event is fully booked.
The Agenda of the event is available.
14/09/2017
The Urban Traffic Control system for Northern Ireland was installed in Belfast in the lates 1970’s. This provided the ability to directly control traffic signals from a remote location. It also provided real time fault reporting. Communication between the UTC system and the on-street equipment was by point-to-point analogue telephones lines rented from BT. BT announced that these would no longer be supported or installed from 2018. DFI Roads therefore contracted Siemens PLC to migrate the 330 analogue lines in Belfast, Lisburn, Bangor, Banbridge, Armagh and Newry to a solution of Broadband (DSL IP), 3G GSM (mobile phone technology) and MESH (radio nework).
The objectives of the project were:
The project was undertaken as part of existing contracts with both Siemens and BT and commenced in February 2015. A detailed survey of the existing networks was carried out as was an evaluation of the available technologies (fibre optic/copper/wireless). A detailed design was completed by TICC, BT and Siemens.
On street work to convert to IP circuits started in February 2015. Work was carried out in several tranches to allow adequate testing and the making redundant of analogue circuits making resource savings throughout the project.
The project was successfully completed in March 2016 with all 330 analogue circuits decommissioned and successfully migrated to IP.
Other types of ITS equipment, such as VMS and Air Quality monitoring units, are also connected to the UTC system.
For the detailed description see attachment.
The improvement in the reliability of journey times, whilst maintaining safety is the main objective of this scheme. Additional benefits include the reduction of, traffic collisions, noise and vehicle emissions as well as providing a boost for businesses and the economy.
The M25 is one of Europe’s busiest motorways, handling around 200,000 vehicles every day. It is at the core of our network and is suffering from increasing congestion levels and journey times. Various options to improve the traffic flow from junctions 5 to 7 were considered and the implementation of a ‘Smart Motorways’ scheme was chosen as the most cost effective solution. The scheme was possible due to the availability of proven ITS technology and traffic management systems previously trialled and implemented on the M42, where the benefits and impacts were fully assessed.
This section of the M25 between junctions 5 and 7 is now running as a “smart” motorway. Smart motorways help relieve congestion by converting the hard shoulder to a running lane. Technology is used to detect incidents, monitor traffic flow and vary the mandatory speed limits to keep traffic moving smoothly and safely.
This twelve mile section of the M25 on the Kent/Surrey border is a new style of ‘smart motorway’ where pioneering ITS technology and use of the hard shoulder as a permanent running lane combine to reduce congestion and ease traffic flow. Smart motorways enables proactive management of the carriageway, including slip roads, deliver additional road capacity more quickly and at less cost than traditional road widening schemes, while remaining at least as safe.
This project addresses user security through incident detection, targeted user information and driving conditions securing. SAPN motorway operator has deployed the project on interchange n°20, on the intersection between A13 motorway and local networks around Rouen (France). It was finalised by end of 2016. The project combines rearrangement of exit lanes geometry, speed limit reduction, relocation of existing VMS and installation of new one, extra dynamic warning signs, traffic jam detectors and video cameras.
For the detailed description see attachment
28/08/2017
On June 23rd, 2017 the European Commission proposed to invest €2.7 billion in 152 key transport projects that support competitive, clean and connected mobility in Europe. This investment is made under the Connecting Europe Facility, the EU’s financial mechanism supporting infrastructure networks.
EU Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said: “The demand for investment in transport infrastructure is huge. This new wave of investment focuses on clean, innovative and digital projects to modernise Europe’s transport network. Today we are one step closer to a true Transport Union, serving the needs of citizens, stimulating the economy and creating jobs. Looking ahead, I am inviting stakeholders to make best use of the remaining funds, using blending to maximise impact and leverage all possible resources.”
Selected projects are mostly concentrated on the strategic sections of Europe’s transport network (the “core network“) to ensure the highest EU added-value and impact. All projects were selected for funding via competitive calls for proposals launched on 13 October 2016.
The Corridor’s project: UMneo, MedTIS III, Crocodile3, NEXT-ITS3 and Arc Atlantique3, have been approved by the Commission who has stressed the excellent relevance of the proposed Actions. Now projects are under scrutiny of INEA who started the drafting of Grant Agreements.
18/08/2017
The Transport Scotland Forth Replacement Crossing (FRC) consists of three major infrastructure projects: ‘The Principal Contract’, including the new Queensferry Crossing, and the adjoining ITS and road schemes to the north and south: ‘Fife ITS’ and ‘M9 J1A’. This is a vital strategic and economic route for both the east, and Scotland nationally; and this project marks the first implementation of a Managed Motorway in Scotland. Completion of the Queensferry Crossing is the final stage, with partial opening of the bridge scheduled for summer 2017.
The project consists of a 2.7 km long cable-stayed bridge; associated connecting roads and junction improvements; and 22 km ITS scheme to manage traffic through the corridor. ITS has been a key element of the design that will: improve safety, facilitate travel time reliability and enhance capacity. All of these features are essential to maintaining the strategically vital road link across the Forth.
ITS will support the operational management of the traffic on the FRC corridor to deliver optimum capacity within a safe, efficient and reliable environment, and provide local information to road and public transport users during normal and abnormal conditions.
The Rande Bridge is located on Autopistas del Atlantico AP-9, which is the main means of communication in Galicia, a region in the north-west of Spain, linking the main Galician cities, A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra and Vigo among them and with Portugal. The AP-9 highway runs from Ferrol in the north of Galicia to Tuy on the border with Portugal and is 220 km long. AUDASA is the concessionaire company that manages the AP-9 highway. The Rande bridge crosses the estuary of Vigo and is a very important infrastructure because the alternative roads are very bad and time consuming. The bridge is 1.6 km long and has two lanes in each direction. The AADT on the bridge was 55,000 vehicles a day in 2015, reaching 64,000 during the months of July and August, with 7% of heavy vehicles. This level of traffic is very high for a two lane per direction road and made recommendable the widening of the bridge. The bridge is now being widening by adding one extra lane in each direction, separated from the main platform, that allows to carry out the project without affecting existing traffic. The works are expected to end by the end of 2017.
AUDASA is going to set up a remote management system of the traffic on the bridge to improve service quality and safety. The system consists of vehicle counters, speed detectors, variable message signs and a weather station that will provide information to a central system which automatically in some cases, or manually in others, will make changes on the maximun speed allowed on the bridge or the lanes drivers can use.
Wallonia, the Southern part of Belgium is at the centre of a very busy road network in Western Europe.Its motorways are part of 3 different European corridors. Much of the traffic consists of heavy goods vehicles which serve the major ports of the North Sea and establish links with industrial areas. Road authorities want to have an accurate knowledge of the traffic in the daily operation of the network in order to calibrate their interventions in case of disruption and to be able to better inform and guide the users. The information gathered is also needed for overall management, e.g. the operation of the toll system per kilometer for HGV and the maintenance programmation.
The project aims at the implementation of new or updated detection equipement on the network and of systems for data collection and data processing. The main goal is to improve operational excellence and cost-efficiency from a road operator / traffic manager perspective. On the other hand, this implementation will also contribute to the improvement of RTTI services, especially regarding traffic conditions. The collected data will not only be used at an operational level but also for network management, e.g. control of overloaded trucks, monitoring of the use of the toll network, traffic simulations,…
14/07/2017
“SOS Autoroute” smartphone application update.
APRR started to develop the SOS Autoroutes smartphone application in 2011 as an innovative and more secure way of reporting and identifying accidents and other incidents on its network. The features and the perimeter covered by the application have been evolving since, and APRR decided to make a major update in 2014 to include new features for both end users and road operators. This project was finished beginning of 2017 and resulted in a more intuitive and fast user interface, and a richer information transmission for the emergency services.
13/07/2017
The Netherlands as UM2 partner
URSA MAJOR 2 is based upon an established, well-working cooperation of the involved road operators and road authorities.
A special situation needs to be considered for the Netherlands. The Netherlands traditionally has a very high traffic density and has consequently started early and swiftly to deploy ITS. In the Netherlands, not only the potential to expand the road network but also the deployment of traditional ITS are nowadays saturated.
Consequently, the focus has shifted towards optimizing the use of existing systems. The Dutch implementing body Rijkswaterstaat tries to improve its systems and content offered to stimulate the private sector to find innovative ways to provide road users with new and additional end user services. Emphasis is put especially on the organizational aspects, stimulating cooperation between public and private sectors and between different transport operators.
The Ministry has recently adopted a new policy with important paradigm shifts, e.g. from public to private, from local to network and from roadside to in-car. This has a strong impact on the nature of ITS deployment in the Netherlands, and of course it also has impact on possible indicators for ITS deployment.
Workshop from Systems to Services
The resulting new, innovative and low threshold service projects in the Netherlands can be a blueprint for such a type of ITS deployment in other European countries facing a similar paradigm shift from systems to services in high traffic load areas. Rijkswaterstaat together with URSA MAJOR 2 is organizing a workshop to present these projects, explain their approach and share their experiences with a wider audience.
Keynote speakers include:
Project presentations include:
Practical information
Doors open on the 26th of September between 10:00 and 10:30. The workshop ends on the 27th of September at 13:00.
Lunch will be provided to all attendants on the 26th and 27th of September. In addition, all attendants of the workshop are invited to a boat tour within the Port of Rotterdam with a walking dinner on the evening of the 26th of September, directly after the ending of day 1 of the workshop.
Participation is free of charge.
Invitation
This workshop will be of interest to road operators, road authorities, traffic managers, IT providers, logistics companies, parking operators, service providers and policy makers at a local, regional and national level.
If you would like to attend the workshop or would like to learn more, please send an email and we will keep you informed. A flyer with more information can also be found here.
We look forward to see you in Rotterdam!
10/07/2017
Amsterdam Practical Trial, phase 2
The Amsterdam Practical Trial (APT) is a large-scaled test of the latest innovations in road transport. Nowhere in the world is intelligent traffic management technology being tested on such a large scale on public roads, involving real cars and real drivers in the Amsterdam region. The goal of APT is to move ever closer, step by step, to a future in which cars, traffic lights and information signs are interconnected and able to cooperate with each other seamlessly. in this way, the trial aims to contribute to improving traffic flow, reducing congestion and realising a safer and cleaner city.
APT is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, Rijkswaterstaat, the municipality of Amsterdam, the province of North Holland, the Transport Authority Amsterdam, private companies and academia.
The Amsterdam Practical Trial is a large-scale trial designed to reduce traffic jams in the Amsterdam region through the innovative use of technologies in cars and on the road. The trial involves three elements: the testing of in-car systems, the testing of roadside systems and finally the integration of these two systems. By the end of the trial, “smart” traffic lights should work in conjunction with navigation equipment in the car. This combination should have the result that persons using the road will reach their destinations faster and can depend on an expected travelling time.
Traffic Wales Service : website and social media improvements
The provision of travel information, which is both timely and reliable to the travelling public, is a vital component in ensuring safe, reliable and informed journeys.
The purpose of the Traffic Wales Service is therefore to further assist the travelling public (within Wales) make informed decisions about their journey, by providing up-to-date information about what is currently happening on the roads and forecast traffic conditions. With the Traffic Wales Service, the travelling public can see if there are any major delays on their route and if so make an informed decision.
This projects therefore aligns with the Welsh government ITS strategy development of the Traffic Wales Service, including : improving the automated provision of information to the Traffic Wales Service from other systems ; sharing details of standard diversion routes associated with road closures ; expanding the accessibility of the Traffic Wales Service to social networks.
For the detailed desciption see attachment.
07/07/2017
Activity 5 Task 2 of the EU EIP project required the specification of a definitive list of practical ITS Deployment and Benefit KPIs for the ex-post evaluation of road-based ITS services. A KPI taskforce was therefore set up in 2016, including representatives of some of the ITS corridors. Active contributors to the KPI definition report included EU EIP representatives from Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom; however, the wider EU EIP project team was also involved in the review of the proposed KPIs list. The objective of such co-operation was twofold:
The EU EIP deployment and benefit KPIs have been presented in a technical report which was circulated for the first time to all ITS Corridors in February 2017. This document has been produced with the intent of providing a single convenient and practical reference point to evaluators, including KPI definitions and suggested estimation methods. The content of this document draws significantly from various sources and work on the subject, in particular: the ITS KPI definitions developed by DG MOVE as well as the body of work relating to the EasyWay and EIP+ studies. For ease of reference, a shortlist of DG MOVE’s KPIs has been included in the EU EIP KPI report. The report also provides a comparison of related (if not directly corresponding) EU/EIP and DG MOVE KPIs. It is important to note that whilst some differences in the KPI lists have been acknowledged, these do not represent ‘mistakes or omissions’ but should be considered within the context of applicability of said KPIs; specifically:
The KPI report, whilst providing an ‘how to’ guide relating to the estimation of KPIs, recognises the fact that there exist country-specific data gathering/quality consistency issues. As such, the KPI evaluation guidelines do not represent mandatory requirements but, for the sake of consistency, it is strongly advised that evaluators adopt such methodologies wherever possible and that consider opportunities for ‘process-change’ if this means a better alignment with the evaluation guidelines. The EU EIP KPI description document does not intend to preclude the use of National standards/estimation methodologies but promotes the principles of ‘Record and Explain’ key kepartures from the suggested guidelines. This approach can also be used to develop a ‘knowledge database’ (Values of Time, Value of Emissions, Value of a Life, Societal Discount rates, etc). In summary, where alternative methodologies are adopted by evaluators, it is required that any significant divergence/departure from the guidelines remains well documented and that impacts are, at least, qualitatively described.
As mentioned previously, the EU EIP KPIs Technical Note intends to be a “practical document”, developed through consensus. In this instance on-the-field implementation will tell us whether this objective has been met! Furthermore, the EU EIP project team recognises the fact that, with time, additional KPIs may be added while existing KPIs amy be modified (or even dropped), as technology evolves. For this reason, this technical document should be considered as a LIVE DOCUMENT.
It is also important to note that the Benefit KPIs have been developed with the intention to facilitate the undertaking of consistent Cost Benefit Analyses(CBAs) across all Corridors, in line with relevant CBA guidance developed as part of the EU/EIP+ project.
Finally, it is important to note that the definition of the KPIs will inform the structure of the future Evaluation Reports as well as other A5 work packages relating to ITS Directive Priority Action Evaluation Plan and the development of the Evaluation Toolkit which will be aligned to the KPI Definitions where applicable.
A copy of the ITS Deployment and Benefit KPI Definitions can be found here.
04/07/2017
Starting in 2015, the Landesbetrieb Mobilität (LBM) Rheinland-Pfalz has been establishing a traffic management system on 16km of the highly frequented motorway A61.
On 30th June 2017, this system was put into service by Dr Volker Wissing, Minister for Economy, Traffic, Agriculture and Viniculture, Mainz and Christian Weibrecht head of the subdivision “Straßenbau, Straßenbaupolitik, Straßenplanung, Straßenrecht“ of the Ministry for Traffic and digital Infrastructure, Bonn, right in time for the beginning of the holiday season.
An above-average rate of heavy goods vehicles, seasonal traffic peaks as well as difficult topographical and meteorological circumstances (incline/descent, snow, mist and rain) made this part of the motorway vulnerable to traffic disruption and accidents. As a response, a traffic control system designed according to the Easyway Deployment Guidelines has been installed between access point and interchange Stromberg and Nahetal that will monitor and manage both carriageways. ITS services implemented are dynamic speed control, HGV overtaking ban and weather and incident warning. The system leads to a more harmonised traffic in particular at peak hours. The traffic management system, which runs under supervision from the Traffic Control Centre Koblenz, will also support the safety of road works and accident damaged vehicles as well as warn the road users about adverse weather conditions.
The TMS consists of 16 gantries totalling 134 VMS to influence traffic; two of those gantries are located on the approach roads leading to the A60 and A61. The gantries span across both carriageways with a width of up to 41 meters.
In the scope of the TMS there are:
The realisation costs account to 4.6 Million € and are financed by the German Federal Republic. The Landesbetrieb Mobilität of Rheinland-Pfalz is responsible for planning realisation and operation. The implementation is also part of the European ITS corridor URSA MAJOR 2 and is therefore co-funded by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
26/06/2017
At the 12th ITS European Congress in Strasbourg, the European ITS Platform’s Activity “Monitoring and Dissemination” led by Stephanie Kleine organised a session titled “the future of road operation and traffic management”.The congress’ visitors were given the chance to hear some top-class professionals’ view of the future. For further information, please download the flyer below.ITS Strasbourg Highlight
23/06/2017
On June 8th, 2017 the EU EIP project (subactivity 4.6) organised a workshop in Frankfurt on the use of metadata in National Access Points (NAPs). The objectives of the workshop were:
• To review existing practices among operating NAPs
• To evaluate the concept and the usage of the “Coordinated Metadata Catalogue” as a proposal for a harmonised set of Metadata
• To develop a common understanding for a harmonised Metadata approach across Europe.
A group of 16 experts and stakeholders from six EU Member States plus Norway have joined the workshop. The attendance demonstrated a mix of the following stakeholders: NAP operators, NAP users and IT / Open Government experts.
The workshop has served as an important milestone within EU EIP sub-activity 4.6 towards a further harmonisation of Metadata across the European NAPs.
A summary of the workshop can be found HERE.
The twelve presentations can be downloaded here:
– presentations 1 – 6
– presentations 7 – 12
Use of probe vehicle data for traffic management (AA2 Action – Spain)
20/06/2017
Starting the use of probe vehicle data for traffic management
Probe Vehicle Data (PVD) is included on the list of “Day1 services” in the European strategy on Cooperative Intelligent transport Systems (C-ITS) COM(2016)766 final. Traffic Directorate in Basque Government, following this European strategy for implementing C-ITS, has decided to evaluate the use of PVD for traffic management.
The current situation is considered as really promising as it has already integrated all the received traffic data for both real time and historic data. Furthermore a graphic dashboard “heat maps” is able to show, in an easy way, the traffic situation (snapshot) allowing for instance, later evaluation of lost vehicle hours or other traffic management approaches like traffic re-routing, traffic information and control. Project already started in the 1st phase of Arc atlantique and it is foreseen to continue in coming years, untill totally deployed and integrated with current traffic management systems.
15/06/2017
As part of Task 1 of EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.1 “Stakeholders, value chains and recommended work processes for ITS services”, a focus was laid on Service ’Round Tables’ which have been identified as a possible platform for stakeholder communication and cooperation.
The report summarises roles and structures of and gives recommendations on such Service ’Round Tables’.
The goal of Task 1 of EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.1 was the definition of stakeholders, value chains, recommended work processes and quality assurance methods. This task, performed in strong interaction with stakeholders, lays the fundament for widening the scope of the quality related work to other ITS Directive priority services in identifying relevant stakeholders, scope and way of working of ITS Directive priority services, and figuring out anchor points for quality assurance and quality assessment methods.
The report summarises results and findings from the analyses and discussions undertaken in Task 1.
EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.1 has organised an open workshop to discuss definitions for quality criteria, quality requirements and assessment methods for Multimodal Travel Information Services (MMTIS).
More than 25 experts on quality of multimodal traveller information services from ten European Member States have joined this workshop in Bruxelles on 30th March 2017. The attendance demonstrated a good mix of four major stakeholders:
– the European Commission;
– road, railway and public transport administrations and operators;
– representative associations like UITP, TISA, CER and POLIS;
– service providers.
The workshop has served as the first milestone within the EU EIP sub-activity towards a complete definition and delivery of quality criteria and requirements for European MMTIS services.
More information and the workshop findings are available in the attached summary.
– Presentation_01_Geissler – Presentation_02_Leonard
– Presentation_03_Pasquale – Presentation_04_Jansen
– Presentation_05_Tzanidaki – Presentation_06_1_Kleine
– Presentation_06_2_Kleine – Presentation_07_Fenkes
– Presentation_08_Niculescu+Laine – Presentation_09_Niculescu
– Presentation_10_Lubrich
12/06/2017
One of the key tasks of the EU EIP project (www.its-platform.eu) is to develop a European ITS Deployment Road Map with the overall objective to support the alignment of national, regional and CEF corridor ITS deployment plans. This is expected to contribute to higher efficiency in ITS deployment and more impact from the use of ITS on European roads.
This second EU EIP Road map workshop will look into the future of traffic management were road operators cooperate with other actors in order to achieve an efficient use of infrastructure and vehicles. We will discuss this in relation to the current main drivers behind ITS deployment which can be summarized as “maintaining the flow and prevent accidents”. The issue will be addressed from as well a regional perspective as from the different perspectives of European road and transport operators. We will also report on the results from a new EU EIP study that has looked into the priorities of European road operators, and initiate a discussion on what is required to widen the scope of road operators to include the perspective of the individual transport in the network operations.
Workshop venue and a detailed program is hereinafter provided.
Attendance to the workshop will require that you register as a visitor to the Congress Exhibition which is for free until 15 June.
Please register at http://strasbourg2017.itsineurope.com/menu/registration/.
From 16´th June an Exhibition pass will cost 25€.
As the number of seats are limited, we kindly ask you to reserve a seat by sending an email to Jonas Sundberg not later than 15 June.
We wish you warm welcome to this workshop!
Arne Lindeberg – Swedish Transport Administration
EU EIP Workshop
Time to shift the perspective of road operators?
Workshop on Preconditions for ITS Deployment
20 June 2017 at 15.45-17.30h
Detailed Program
Venue:
European ITS Conference Strasbourg, Dresde room, 1st floor, Strasbourg Convention Center
All attendants need to register to the Congress to gain access to the venue. You need to be registered as at least an Exhibition Visitor in order to have a badge that is scanned by the security guards at the entrance.
Program:
15.45 Welcome, introduction to EU EIP and the ITS Deployment road map development
Arne Lindeberg, Swedish Transport Administration
15.50 A Danish perspective on ITS Deployment: Drivers for ITS deployment on corridors, networks and in urban regions
Åke Egemalm, Danish Road Directorate
A national view of the present situation where government savings struck infrastructure investments and deployment of new technology becomes imminent
16.10 A Romanian perspective on ITS Deployment: Drivers for ITS deployment on road corridors, motorways and in urban regions
Mihai Niculescu, ITS Romania
A national view on national and local ITS planning, providing insight in how new technology and solutions can be used in a network with emerging ITS infrastructure deployments to support current and future traffic management needs.
16.30 Case East-West Corridor: Preconditions for ITS deployment reducing road transport needs
Jan Willem Tierolf, Rijkswaterstaat NL
The East-West Corridor project are working on the deployment of ITS with the objective of reducing the demand for road transport (by increasing efficiency) rather than solving congestion problems. How can this be motivated in competition with traditional traffic management measures?
16.50 ITS deployment preconditions and Characteristics
Jonas Sundberg, Sweco
An investigation has been carried out within EU EIP to identify the objectives and needs that forms the background for road operators ITS deployment decisions, and which ITS services that from a strategic and operational perspective can be used to fulfil these objectives while taking into account the characteristics of the road infrastructure.
17.05 Discussion
– How do we extend the scope of traffic management to include the needs and priorities of individual transports?
– What is the role of the road operator, and how can cooperation with other actors be organized?
– Which incentives can support further development? How can this be supported by market forces?
17.20 Work shop conclusions, continued work
17.30 End
EC is hosting an EU EIP Activity 2 External Stakeholder Session on “future road operation and road management” at the EC exhibition booth Tuesday 20 from 16:45-18:00. This session will consider managing the road traffic of the future. Electrification, automation and connectivity are major disruptive paradigm shifts in how road transport will evolve in the next two decades. Road operation and traffic management and the role of the “Traffic manager” must adapt to these developments and find ways to benefit from these innovations in order to achieve the policy objectives of save, environmentally friendly and efficient mobility. This will require substantial – potentially also disruptive – changes in services provided, systems used and the processes operated for traffic management. Roles and responsibilities will have to be re-allocated to a new set of players in the domain, and the changes may even have impact on legislation and regulation of traffic.
Round tables, platforms and private sector initiatives have been launched to address issues like the requirements for automated driving, the deployment of cooperative systems and public / private cooperation for enhanced traffic management. This particular session wants to stimulate the discussion from the perspective of European cooperation of road operators, which has extended the established EU transport policy tool of Core Network Corridors towards the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in these corridors and – recently – the piloting of innovative C-ITS technology in the framework of the Connecting Europe Facility.
The findings of the discussion and the results of a questionnaire during the session will provide input for the upcoming EU EIP External Stakeholder Workshop 6/7 of November in Utrecht. See Save the day!
Find the format description and agenda of the session here.
Together with the redesign process of the ITS Deployment Guidelines (ITS DGs) in order to facilitate their handling, it is planned to renew the existing best practices with a special focus on supporting the DG requirements and to enrich the result with new innovative examples for ITS deployment.
EU EIP Activity 2 “Monitoring & Dissemination” therefore encourages all ITS Corridors Member States, road operators and interested external stakeholders to provide innovative best practices. The process will be performed by the Activity’s Expert Groups on Traffic and Traveller Information, Traffic Management and Freight & Logistics. Together they elaborated a common best practice template, which is easy to fill. Once filled, interested ITS DG users will find rich information about exemplary and service specific ITS deployment. Additionally, the input will be processed for the yearly best practice report.
The next step is now to circulate the template all around Europe soon. It is expected to obtain feedback before the summer break.
09/06/2017
Are we on the right direction to reach the objective to have harmonized ITS deployment beyond borders? The European Commission is active in boosting member states cooperation. The session will present successful cross border ITS implemented in MedTIS and Arc Atlantique projects (co-financed by the European Commission). These deployments will consist of a series of proven ITS technologies and services which have known and proven impacts on the efficiency of the road network as well as successful cross border services. It will include traffic management systems and services and traffic information services that support traffic managers in directing traffic operations.
MedTIS and Arc Atlantique projects have organized a session for the ITS European congress to be held in Strasbourg. The session will focus on cross border achievements and cooperation and it will be organized as follows:
Session number: PR02
Time and day: June 20th (14.00 /15.30) – Room Berlin
Organizer: Malika Seddi
Moderator: Paul Wadsworth
Panelists :
08/06/2017
DATEX II will consult its own Stakeholder Advisory Board (STAB). This high level board consists of external stakeholders (key public or private organizations with a stake in the DATEX maintenance and developments).
Stakeholders with a wide range of competences were invited to meet in Strasbourg (EU ITS Platform, CEDR, ASECAP, TISA, ERTICO, POLIS, Google, TomTom, TM2.0, TN-ITS, CLARS Platform, C2C, ETSI, C-Roads etc). The Board provides a platform to disseminate knowledge and receive feedback on new developments and dovetail on relevant issues or new developments.
The objective of the side-event is to find out how DATEX II enables ITS services and how stakeholders can benefit from this. It will be an informal and convivial gathering, providing participants with insight into the benefits of a liaison between them and DATEX II. DATEX II experts will bring an untraditional and interactive session, drinks and snacks included.
The European ITS Platform recognizes the importance and added value of DATEX II as the information model for road traffic and travel information in Europe. Relationships and cooperation between EU ITS Platform and DATEX II PSA were launched and are ruled by a specific Memorandum of Understanding.
From June 16th an Exhibition pass will cost €25.
06/06/2017
Last May 4th and 5th the 1st Intermediate Member State Supervision Assembly was held in Rome in the venue of the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport.
The Italian Ministry, coordinator of the EU EIP project, welcomed high officers of the EU ITS Platform, an European initiative who brings together the majority of the European key players cooperating to establish an open forum aiming at providing a joint contribution for the future strategy, for policy recommendation towards a better development and deployment of ITS services along European road Corridors.
Communication team prepared a short presentation on EU EIP, giving a full European perspective for ITS matters, but even with an historical perspective: we are European Citizens working in favor of all the European Citizens, we need to be Europe, within this frame it is worthwhile mentioning the celebration of EU treaties happened here in Rome just a few weeks ago.
26 beneficiaries were present around the table.
The set list of topics was the following:
Some outcomes of the meeting:
High level present in the meeting decided that the Platform can play an important role stimulating the dialogue and promoting cooperation between public and private sectors and increasing the dialogue among stakeholders.
The number of subjects having an active role in the project is quite important; moreover, different procedures apply at national level. A support is needed for beneficiaries to provide the requested administration documents for INEA in an appropriate quality and to face this issue Member States proposed the creation of an Administrative Contact Group.
MSSA provided the platform for ITS corridors to share the current status and achievements of the Corridors. Here EU EIP gives a clear European added value (monitoring of ITS implementations, coordination of strategies, exchange of best practices among ITS Corridors) and avoid working in silos. On the level of project management it the clear milestone reporting and monitoring was appreciated appearing complementary to the formal reporting prescribed and performed by the commission.
The last achievements concerning communication were discussed as concrete results the platform fostered its communication with external stakeholders. Two numbers of the new «European ITS platform Newsletter» were already published and reached (each issue) more than 4.000 e-mail addresses, all through Europe.
17/05/2017
Please register here for the EU EIP C-ITS event: https://www.lyyti.in/eu_eip_c-its
15/05/2017
On 8 May 2017 the Swedish road administration Trafikverket launched the Swedish National Access Point Traficdata.se for priority actions b (real-time traffic information), c (safety related traffic information) and e (truck parking information). The National Access Point was launched during a combined information and “try out” meeting with future users of Trafficdata.se, including private service providers such as TomTom, HERE and Mediamobile. One of the objectives of the meeting was to show the advantages of being part of the community and to make the information service providers acquainted with the updating procedures for their information in the portal. In addition to the Swedish National Access Point also the harmonised “self declaration” was presented by The Swedish Transport Agency as well as the Swedish “Open data” portal, presented by “Riksarkivet”.
12/05/2017
On the 10th of April 2017, the second EWmap webinar was held. Attendees from 5 member states participated in the web conference and were informed about the following topics:
Video description
10/05/2017
Port of Zeebrugge and developer Ecorys have launched an online tool that gives access to the complete offer of intermodal connections to the users of the Port of Zeebrugge, including indirect connections.
Zeebrugge is the fifth port in Europe that uses the ‘Intermodal Links’ developed by Ecorys, an online independent search engine which allows finding the most efficient and fastest intermodal service provider for container, ferry and ro/ro transport.between more than one thousand terminals in fifty countries.
The planner calculates the optimal route from approx. 16.000 direct terminal connections, offered by 150 intermodal (rail, barge, shortsea) operators, including transport time and frequencies of connections.
De planning tool can be found here.
Note: This text and picture are translated from an article in Nieuwsblad Transport. The development of the Zeebrugge route planner was partly supported by the work in the CEF-funded EU EIP project (Activity 3: East West Corridor).
14/04/2017
In 2013 en 2015 Delegated Regulations have been published by the European Commission requesting Member States to establish so-called National Access Points on truck parking, safety related traffic information and real-time traffic information.
Activity 4.6 of the EU EIP project has analysed the current status of these National Access Points across Europe. The result of this study is now available here. Apart from information about existing or soon to be realised National Access Points, the document also provides useful information about level of service of NAP’s, metadata and DATEX. The annex of the report among others contains the contact details of the NAP’s and National Bodies as well as that it contains the Uniform Declaration of Compliance, which can be used by the data suppliers and information service providers for the self-assessment.
04/04/2017
On 5 May 2017 the Port of Zeebrugge will organize an information session about the new intermodal route planner for the Port of Zeebrugge. The planner will be accessible via the new website. The intermodal route planner is based on the intermodal route planner for the East West Corridor, but then tailor-made for the Port of Zeebrugge.
Please note that the information session will be in Dutch.
The announcement can be downloaded here.
31/03/2017
UM2 Invitation: 2nd EWmap Webinar
After the success of the first EWmap webinar in 2016, UM2 would like to invite you, as road operator, road authority representative and/or partner in the context of the ITS deployment corridors and EU ITS Platform activities, to the second webinar which is scheduled for the 10th of April 2017 at 2:00 PM CEST. The webinar will last at most 90 minutes.
While the first webinar informed the users about the organisational changes in EWmap and the general usage of the tool, the second webinar aims at keeping EWmap users informed about new features and present use cases.
Particularly, the two following aspects have been frequently requested to be highlighted:
In addition, the EWmap community is eager to discuss any further user requirements with the ITS deployment corridor community. The webinar is organised into the following three main sections:
For participation please contact Osama AlGazali. Please register soon, as we try to tailor the content to the users as much as possible. The participation is free of charge! Please have in mind that the webinar like EW-Map itself is restricted to road operators, road authority representatives and partners in the context of the ITS deployment corridors and EU ITS Platform activities.
We are looking forward to meeting you!
About EWmap:
EWmap is a free web-based GIS application designed to visualise the network aspects of European ITS and provides a basis for a comprehensive content management for planning and impact information. It is the first Geographic Information System (GIS) dedicated to documentation and analysis of ITS deployment on a European scale.
The EWmap application and the webinar are co-financed by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
29/03/2017
The knowledge of the data-exchange requirements from various institutional users is essential for taking them into the loop of the future standardisation process. It is the reason why the European ITS Platform is performing an action called: “Liaison and harmonization on interfaces for data exchange” (Sub-Activity 4.5).
This action targets two main objectives:
One of the key results in the first year of the project was a clear definition on roles, responsibilities and approach to the cooperation activated between EU EIP SA4.5 and DATEX II PSA to avoid duplication of work and promoting synergies.
Relationships and cooperation between EU ITS Platform and DATEX II PSA were formalized through the elaboration and signature of a specific Memorandum of Understanding.
The memorandum of Understanding identifies:
This MoU was officially signed between both project-managers during the Joint Technical Secretariat meeting hold in Utrecht on March 14th 2017 and is available through this link. Further information is available through this page and contacts are even possible through the platform helpdesk.
Workshop summary
EU EIP Context and Workshop Goal
For many years, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and core European ITS services have represented a major implementation objective of the road operators collaborating within the European ITS Platform (EU EIP) community. EU EIP serves as the technical knowledge management center for the responsibilities of road authorities and road operators in ITS. Part of this engagement is the work on quality requirements for European core ITS services (as covered by Delegated Regulations under the ITS Directive 2010/40/EU). In former project phases, a set of quality requirements for real time traffic information (RTTI) and safety related traffic information (SRTI) has been elaborated, tested and validated in different Member States. The summary results of these efforts are available as “Quality package for safety related and real-time traffic information services” (Kulmala et al. 2016) on the EU EIP website. A major element of the quality related work in the current work programme of EU EIP (2016-2020) is to broaden the perspective beyond RTTI and SRTI to the full set of priority services of the ITS Directive. To understand the underlying value chains and work processes in the fields of Multimodal travel information services (MMTIS), Intelligent Truck Parking (ITP) and perspectively also C-ITS (see EU EIP website for vision and mission of the C-ITS activity) and to engage with the stakeholder communities, is a fundamental step for the EU EIP community. It should form the basis for figuring out anchor points for quality assurance and quality assessment for ITS Directive related services with major or at least significant involvement of road authorities and operators.
Workshop Process
More than 20 experts on quality of traffic information from nine European Member States have joined the workshop in Paris on 14th September 2016. The workshop, held in the Maison de l’Aquitaine, has been co-organised by CEREMA and BASt. Roger Pagny (ITS France) has acted as workshop moderator. The quality experts have covered the end-to-end value chain of traffic information with a good representation of TISA members. The attendance has thus demonstrated a good mix of road administrations and operators on one hand, and service providers on the other hand. In the morning, the scene has been set by a series of presentations (see table below) focusing on the specific parts of the value chain. The afternoon has contained an interactive element with work split in two groups, one on the more generic concept of quality and one more specifically on stakeholders and their position in the value chain.
Workshop Findings
Presentations and group work within the workshop have reconfirmed the generic concept of the value chain of traffic information. Extending the scope of the EU EIP sub-activity on quality of European ITS services beyond real time and safety related traffic information (RTTI/SRTI) includes the need to reach out to a larger community of stakeholders. To provide some order principle, stakeholders can be grouped to “families”. Those families are very much the same, they are just bigger when different modes are covered. Moreover, stakeholders play particular roles in the value chain. However, the assignment of stakeholders to roles should not be prescribed.
Presentations have stressed the important role of National Access Points (NAP) for the ITS services covered by the ITS Directive Delegated Regulations. The Delegated Regulations involve a lot of content providers (some of them also private) and all of them should offer their content at the NAP. The NAP is about data, one challenge is how service providers can be encouraged to list their services. The efforts towards harmonised self-declarations driven by EU EIP (sub-activity on National Access Points) and TISA represent a promising way forward. However, pragmatic approaches still have to be found for a lot of issues. It is perceived as very helpful to flag these issues also to the implementation progress meetings of the Member States experts.
Assuring quality of traffic information remains a challenging issue. Quality indicators and quality levels for the content segment (i.e. where road authorities and operators have their focus of responsibility) have been proposed, agreed and tested, see “Quality Package” as a summary reference. The data fusion from different sources and quality assurance mechanisms helps to improve the quality of traffic information. A quality framework should hence take into account data quality as well as process quality. Checks and feedback loops (incl. feedback to data owners) lead to rather long improvement cycles but are necessary to provide reliable and credible information in the long run.
The efforts of EU EIP (sub-activity on quality of European ITS services) to make the quality definitions (e.g. timeliness, latency, classification correctness) more practical is seen as very useful. Despite of quality being a cross-cutting concept, Level of Service (LoS) and Level of Quality (LoQ) depend on use cases (see also “Quality Package”).
Traffic information is communicated via different channels. In the future, C-ITS enabled services will make traffic information and traffic management even more agile than today. Evolving communication technologies (e.g. ETSI ITS G5, in the long run also 5G) contribute to this agility. On the other hand, initial conditions in different Member States will continue to matter as legacy has a persistent or long lasting influence.
Collaboration between actors in the value chain for traffic information is of mutual interest. The challenge at hand is to achieve a fair distribution of the costs and benefits stemming from the collaboration. Apart from the way how collaboration is institutionalised or encouraged, there are a number of requirements for the collaboration: the fundamental willingness to collaborate, the power of authority / legitimacy to act, and data driven decisions that help to establish a robust fair share concept.
Outlook
The workshop has served as the first milestone within the relevant EU EIP sub-activity towards an extended scope for quality for European ITS services. Workshop presentations and summary will be taken up in the first report of EU EIP quality on stakeholders, value chains and work processes for ITS services. The series of workshops which is organised by EU EIP sub-activity on quality will continue with a workshop on quality aspects of Multimodal Travel Information Services (MMTIS).
28/03/2017
A large and qualified delegation of experts from the European ITS platform (EU EIP) group supporting the deployment of C-ITS services has joined the workshop co-organized by the Amsterdam Group and CODECS (Horizon 2020 CSA). In total, more than 50 attendees were in Schiphol to present and debate the progression towards C-ITS deployment in Europe. The program was centered around the following building blocks:
1) Platform(s) for coordinating C-ITS Deployment,
2) Pilots and deployment initiatives,
3) Progress in solving open issues for the initial deployment phase.
The workshop demonstrated how the open sharing of findings from pilots can stimulate accelerated take-up of C-ITS services.
Please have a look at the vision and mission of the EU EIP C-ITS team (sub-activity 4.4), available through this page.
Program, presentations and a brief summary are available from the websites www.amsterdamgroup.eu and www.codecs-project.eu. The EU EIP is looking forward for continued cooperation, also with regard to the workshop on lessons learned from the first pilots and deployment initiatives which will be organized at the end of 2017.
Please download the presentations of the workshop from this page.
27/03/2017
The EU EIP website is growing in the attention of operators and stakeholders. The newsletter of EU EIP was published and, since the first issue, reached some thousand readers. These web instruments are conceived to diffuse progresses achieved in the European ITS platform or in relevant corridors, linking this way the community of the platform to the external world of technicians, institutions, scientist and the industry. The Newsletter wants to be a tool for the sharing of knowledge concerning results achieved and opportunities that a pan-European approach can offer to the progressing in the world of road technologies.
To this purpose, active members of the Communication Team are open to share with the community and with stakeholder a wide range of contributions.
This is an open invitation to the community and to the stakeholders to contribute through the following issues:
Highlights – Highlights are short texts that describe an advancement in the project to be published both in the web and in future issues of the EU EIP newsletter. The following categories can be proposed:
Should you wish to propose an highlight, please do not hesitate to use the this link.
The intermodal route planner for European container transport has been launched recently and can be used free of charge at the following location: https://eastwestcorridor.eu
It is the first real intermodal Intelligent Transport System (ITS) within the European ITS Platform, and as such will be an example for other (corridor) projects in this field. It demonstrates how ITS can play a role for the better use of corridors, helping to realize European policies.
Increasing visibility of intermodal connections
The intermodal route planner is developed within Activity 3 (East-West Corridor) of the EU EIP project. The East-West Corridor integrates the European CEF corridors North Sea – Baltic and North Sea – Mediterranean, including links to crossing North – South corridors. A dedicated intermodal route planner on the East-West Corridor will increase the visibility of the intermodal transport services on the corridor. Logistics companies can save on costs and can reduce their environmental impact by using intermodal transport along the corridor. In addition, the intermodal route planner will function as a catalyst for cooperation on the East West corridor, since it will show that cooperation will lead to advantages that one cannot achieve on its own.
900 intermodal terminals and 14.000 direct intermodal connections
The Intermodal Planner for the East-West Corridor shows all possible intermodal connections in Europe with an origin and/or destination on the corridor. Through its online search engine (based on the Intermodal Links Planner) it allows users to find the best and fastest container transport services between 900 terminals in 48 countries. It determines the optimal route out of more than 14,000 direct connections offered by 150 intermodal transport operators (rail, barge and short sea). With literally two mouse clicks all intermodal options between origin A and destination B will become visible, as well as the contact details of the intermodal operators and terminals.
24/03/2017
URSA MAJOR 2 ITS Corridor coordinator Stephanie Kleine was invited to attend the ninth meeting of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean Core Network Corridor Forum, 06 December in Brussels to present the UM2 project to the audience. URSA MAJOR 2 was selected for presentation as new project of the ScanMed Corridor, besides 5 others.
Stephanie Kleine presented the objectives of the current, 20% co-funded EU project (2014 – 2018) as well as future goals like removing bottlenecks in traffic management, better support for freight navigation, enhanced truck parking services and improved freight safety. She informed about UM2 efforts to liaise with external stakeholders, especially those involved in other modes of transport (rail, ports, ferries) and to include the last mile interfaces (e.g. in urban nodes) in the corridor work. Stephanie further emphasized UM2’s efforts towards European ITS harmonization in close coordination with the EU ITS Platform (EU EIP) led by the Italian Ministry, and its liaison with other co-funded ITS projects. It was proposed to better align the ITS and the Core Corridor “families”.
A networking break allowed establishing contacts between UM2 and stakeholders from the rail sector and ports.
The presentation of UM2 during the forum was certainly a great success, since many new URSA MAJOR corridor partners could be activated willing to take part in the URSA MAJOR neo ITS project application that was submitted to EC beginning of February.
Pat Cox, European ScanMed coordinator, stressed the usefulness of exchanging project “insider” information and suggested to participants to learn from that and to do business with each other.
14/03/2017
The European Access Point for Truck Parking aims to provide access to safe & secure truck parking data in DATEX II format. In accordance with Article 5 of Commission delegated Regulation (EU) No 885/2013 in the framework of the ITS Directive 2010/40/EU public or private parking operators and service providers shall share and exchange data related to safe and secure parking areas through a national or international access point. The Commission is managing a European Access Point for Truck Parking Data to enable continuity of services throughout the EU. Although Switzerland is not bound to this EU regulation, the country is a partner of URSA MAJOR 2 and supports this activity from the European Commission and now publishes DATEX II Truck Parking Data from Switzerland. On the corresponding EU open data portal everyone can access the XML file with static data from 112 Swiss truck parking sites. Beneath basics like its name, corresponding motorway and its location in the form of coordinates also more sophisticated information is available, like the availability of toilets, shops, restaurants or similar facilities. Of course, the number of truck parking places on each site is available, too, together with the information on spaces for cars. ASTRA, which is the federal agency for roads and traffic in Bern, collected and structured all this data in the past months and now offers the information to the public.
With this information, map providers can enrich their information and guide motorists to the best-matching parking sites. One of those maps is available from the European Commission itself: the TENtec Interactive Map Viewer. You can select the Layer for ‘Safe & Secure parkings for trucks and commercial vehicles’ and visualise the static data, not only for Switzerland but for a number of EU countries. By selecting one of the parking sites, more detailed information is published.
By using the DATEX II standard for transferring truck parking information, a large and valuable data model is available that supports the transfer of all kind of parking related information. Information on groups of places for special purposes, tariffs (if any), opening times (also for adjacent facilities) or a huge variety of location referencing mechanisms are just a few of the possibilities offered by the DATEX model, which is standardised in CEN/TS 16157 Part 6.
As a next logical step, dynamic data on free spaces should be transferred to get ‘real time’ information on the best sites to choose.
22/02/2017
February 21, 2017
EU-EIP and TISA have collaborated in a series of workshops to harmonise the Declaration of Compliance for Priority Action C (SRTI-Safety Related Traffic Information) for use in all Member States.
Delegated Regulation No 886/2013
Delegated Regulation No 886/2013 addresses the provision of road safety-related traffic information, following Priority Action C of the Directive 2010/40/EU. This Delegated Regulation requests Member States to manage a national access point for safety-related traffic data. It also describes the obligation of Member States to carry out an assessment of compliance of the parties addressed by this delegated regulation, i.e. Public and Private Road Operators, Traffic Information Service Providers, Data Suppliers and Broadcasters dedicated to road traffic. These parties shall submit a Declaration of Compliance in accordance with the requirements set out in Articles 3 to 8 of the Delegated Regulation. EU EIP[1] and TISA[2] have collaborated in a series of workshops to harmonise this Declaration of Compliance for Delegated Regulation No 886/2013.
Why a harmonised approach?
Teun Hendriks, Chair of the TISA Technical and Standardisation Committee: “Without a harmonised approach, Road Operators, Data Suppliers and Information Service Providers would face the risk that -if operating in more than one country- they would need to submit a Declaration of Compliance in different formats, in different languages, and under a variety of different rules. The harmonised Declaration of Compliance should remove this administrative burden; the provided definitions and explanations of terms should clarify roles and responsibilities”.
Louis Hendriks, leader of the EU EIP activity ‘Harmonisation and monitoring SPA’ highlights that this is a win-win for both the Data Suppliers, Information Service Providers and the National Bodies that have to carry out the assessment of compliance: “National Bodies could possibly be facing discussions with a whole range of Road Operators, Information Service Providers, Data Suppliers and Broadcasters that operate within their territory, and that might submit their own Declarations of Compliance in different languages and in a variety of formats. Adopting and promoting the use of the harmonised Declaration of Compliance will make life easier for all involved parties”.
European Commission supports harmonised declaration
The European Commission (DG MOVE) has closely followed the development of the harmonised Declaration of Compliance and view it as a welcome contribution to the harmonised deployment of the National Access Points. The harmonised Declaration of Compliance will be presented in Brussels during an SRTI Member State follow-up Expert Meeting on 9 March 2017.
Where to find the harmonised declaration of compliance?
As an outcome of this fruitful cooperation between EU EIP and TISA three documents have been produced and are now publicly available on the TISA website.
A zip-file with the three documents can be downloaded HERE.
Next step
In 2017 EU EIP and TISA intend to start working on a similar model Declaration of Compliance for Priority Action B, covering the provision of Real-Time Traffic Information (No 962/2015).
[1] European ITS Platform, www.its-platform.eu [2] Traveller Information Services Association, www.tisa.org
20/02/2017
Dear colleague,
We cordially invite you to the workshop “Facilitating Connected & Automated Driving – a Road Operator’s Perspective”, organized by EU EIP sa4.2.
The European ITS Platform’s sub-activity 4.2 “Facilitating Automated Driving” organizes a workshop to explore the relationship between automated driving and the infrastructure. The workshop will be held in the Rijkswaterstaat LEF Future Center (Utrecht, The Netherlands) from Wednesday 15 to Thursday 16 March 2017. We will start at 12:00 on March the 15th with a walk in lunch and registration, the workshop will end at 16:30 the next day. The final agenda will be sent later.
Your participationWe invite you to bring your expertise and actively engage in the interactive sessions and discussions. The expected number of participants will be approximately 80 persons. The workshop is free of charge and you can register by sending an email (before March 8th)
We look forward to welcoming you at this workshop.
With kind regards,
Risto Kulmala
Principal Advisor on ITS | Liikennevirasto – Finnish Transport Agency
Project Leader EU EIP sa4.2 ‘Facilitating Automated Driving’
Tom AlkimSenior Advisor Connected & Automated Driving | Rijkswaterstaat, Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment
TN-ITS hosted a joint TN-ITS EU EIP workshop on 19th January 2017 in Brussels, with the main objective to show the progress of the implementation in the different member states; showcase some of the TN-ITS functionalities implemented so far and provide the perspectives of the mapmakers.
The detailed agenda is available here.
View the presentations below:
19/01/2017
The EU EIP deliverable identifies autonomic functions and applications in existing ITS implementations and describes the benefits of these autonomic properties for the road operators and their customers, travelers and hauliers.
The report specifies the autonomic behaviour and properties of intelligent transport systems and functions at traffic management/control/information centres as well as in roadside ITS systems, giving multiple examples of the existing deployments in different European countries. Last, the report describes the conclusions and the next steps to be taken with regard to utilizing automation in road operators’ own ITS.
EU EIP has analysed the requirements of higher-level road vehicle automation towards road authorities and operators and also other stakeholders. These requirements deal with the consistency and continuity of the physical infrastructure (e.g. road markings, landmarks, signs, road surface quality, traffic management strategies and maintenance processes), the digital infrastructure (e.g. digital maps, real time traffic information, back-office processes), road maintenance and network management processes, and classification of roads for automated driving. In addition, the report addresses the legal and normative framework requirements of automated driving.
