Current and future technology in road design and operation

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Current and future technology in road design and
operation
Terry Warin Executive Director ITS Australia 3
June 2008
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Contents

• Understanding road congestion and its impact on
  greenhouse gas emissions
• Impact of road design and operations on vehicle
  greenhouse gas emissions
• Smarter roads and vehicles
• The future
• The challenge

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Congestion
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Understanding Congested Freeways
Source VicRoads
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Eastbound on Monash Freeway towards High St
What day is this?
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Wednesday 259pm
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Wednesday 300pm
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Wednesday 301pm
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Wednesday 302pm
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Unmanaged Freeways
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Congestion Probable causes

• Poor road design
• Poor operations and management
• Too many cars wanting to use the road at the same
  time
• Limited public transport little choice
• Traffic Signals not synchronised

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Congestion - impacts
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Personal Transport Activity
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WTW CO2 Projections
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Trends in Transport Emissions
Victoria 1990-2005
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Road Design and Operations
Actions to Improve

• Site lines
• Merge lane design

• Incident detection and clearance time
• Maintenance activity disruption to traffic flow

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Merge Lanes
An example of poor merge lane design
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Smarter Roads and Vehicles
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Smarter Roads

• CCTV
• Automatic incident detection
• Loops
• Automatic video incident detection
• Variable speed limit systems
• Ramp metering

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AM PEAK Typical day (Fixed Time)
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AM PEAK Typical day (ALINEA/HERO)
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PM PEAK Typical day (No Ramp Metering)
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PM PEAK Typical day (ALINEA/HERO)
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Smarter Vehicles

• Electronic Stability Control
• Lane Keeping
• Adaptive Cruise Control
• Driver Drowsiness monitoring
• Collision Avoidance
• Voice Control
• Route Guidance
• Driver assistance sensor-based systems

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V2V Integration
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Smarter Vehicles

• Congestion Avoidance using RDS-TMC

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The Future
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Roads

• Congestion charging
• Road pricing
• Lane pricing
• V2I Integration (VII)

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The Challenge
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The Challenge

• Persuading the community
• Political preparedness
• Articulating the case
• Role of lobby groups
• Working with environment and transport groups

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Our Common Goal must be..
To raise the Blue line!
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Thankyou for your attention.