Transport

Traffic congestion plagues cities

Congestion contributes to stress levels, pollution, decreased productivity and a huge economic cost. This is only set to get worse as our urban population grows.

Some of the challenges around measuring and modelling traffic flows, road performance, bottlenecks and count are:

1. The sensors are at fixed locations so it becomes difficult to see the entire network.
2. It is expensive to maintain these sensors and during road works, these areas become black spots.
3. Fleet cars, which are often used for sampling, don’t provide an accurate picture of traffic conditions as the data they supply can be skewed depending on sample size, time of day and region.

Transformation through analytics

To transform infrastructure planning, we need to identify and target network pinch points so we can increase network capacity.

Keeping road performance up by substantially increasing incident clearance rate keeps traffic flowing. Agencies need to detect incidents and clear them quickly and predict and plan for future traffic conditions using historical analysis and predictive scenario planning.

The ultimate aim is to create a better journey experience for motorists. Accurate information is key to increasing motorist happiness. Instruments such as variable message signs on motorways provide journey times to the nearest exit, letting users make informed decisions, such as whether to use public roads or toll roads.

USING BIG DATA

Google Maps data can dramatically shift the landscape of traffic management by making it more- timely, accurate and cost effective.

Why: The sheer volume of data alone is staggering. We are talking upwards of millions of ‘road sensors’ instead of the traditional static road sensors.

We use Google’s live traffic data to create solutions that help plan for infrastructure investments, delight the road user by giving accurate journey times and use predictive analysis to anticipate network behaviour and reduce congestion.