The set up of a traffic monitoring control centre

Summary

Perugia Municipality set up a last generation traffic monitoring control centre in order to increase the efficiency both of the municipality service fleet and of the urban public transport fleet. Significant results have been achieved in terms of service effectiveness and costs reduction.

Implementing sustainable mobility

For both the two main subsystems, the stages of the implementation were the following: • Monitoring & supervision software development. This step consisted of the development of custom software modules and interfaces; • Communication software development. A software module is nowadays listening at a specific IP address, expecting to receive location information from remote vehicles; • UTC/AVM integration and test. The action led to the identification of the communication protocol between PT vehicles and the TMC; • Devices installation. The firmware adaptation for the GPS transmitter has been finalized and correctly tested in a local communication; • Overall deployment system test and evaluation. This task has been performed after the completion of all the previous tasks. The implementation of GPS transmitters installed on Municipality fleet vehicles closed this last step in April 2012.

The implementation of the Measure in Perugia addressed four main points: • To improve public transport efficiency, building a new public transport management centre; • To inform passengers, providing dynamic public transport information at bus stops; • To connect the Urban Traffic Control centre with the public transport management centre to implement Public Transport priority; • To build an overview of the use of municipality resources using a unique interface to monitor public transport vehicles, municipality vehicles and taxi.  

Progress

The priority of the Public Transport vehicles, without adversely affecting private traffic, represents a major opportunity for the Public Transport management centre and the traffic control centre. The Perugia Mobility Platform provides the opportunity to demonstrate traffic sensitive public transport priority on 25 out of 124 buses in the local area. Also to provide potential access to the real time monitoring of traffic flows, parking availability, and the tracking of public services fleets (taxis, local police and municipality vehicles). Eventually, all data coming to the centre provides data input to enable real time and short term simulation of the transport system to take place for planning purposes. The Public Transport Centre provides information to the Mobility Platform to allow for the visualization of Public Transport (PT) vehicles in the City. The PT management Centre also provides dynamic transit information at the bus stop for passenger comfort and to enhance public transport service quality. Information of time of arrival at bus stops based on planned and data from the equipped vehicles help PT users and improve transport comfort.

Outcomes

Measure 8.1 led to significant improvements in the quality of urban life in the city of Perugia. Results of the analyses related to all indicators give a very positive feedback on the implementation of the measure in both its aspects (AVM – PT priority and Municipal AVL) and indicators figures show a good impact over urban traffic flows.