Plan to develop information services based on cooperative intelligent transport systems
Reading Borough Council has taken the first steps towards the development of a Journey Time Engine as part of the effort to build a smart transport infrastructure.
It has launched a procurement for support under a two-year deal, drawing on funds from the Department for Transport to develop services based on cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS).
The council has outlined an aim to pull together a number of datasets to build a platform for accurately monitoring and predicting journey times and feed into its urban traffic management and control (UTMC) strategies.
It said the aims are to support more advanced strategies for the use of its variable message signs, and ultimately to deliver information services directly to vehicles in its area.
Other aims include integrating information from the new platform with its UTMC system and the local bus management systems.
It also plans to make the data available on its existing open data platform.
C-ITS are entering the thinking of public authorities responsible for roads as they provide the potential for vehicles to digitally interact with each other and the road infrastructure. This promises to help drivers adapt to traffic conditions more effectively, improve road safety and make the flow of traffic more efficient.
The European Commission has published a strategy on the development of the technology with the aim of developing a legal framework and encouraging the first deployments by next year. This emphasises the use of mixture of communications technologies and a ‘learning by doing approach’.
Image by Aubrey Morandata, CC BY 2.0 through flickr
