The number of road transport in modern cities is increasing every day. This is an objective reality, but if traffic flows are not controlled and managed, a collapse will inevitably occur. To prevent this from happening, the world is already using intelligent transport systems (ITS) with might and main. In the West, they began to be used somewhat earlier than in Russia, but in this way our country manages to avoid many mistakes and wrong paths that foreign developers followed.
So what is ITS? This is a whole ecosystem that includes road infrastructure, traffic and pedestrian traffic control sensors, traffic situation sensors, smart traffic lights and pedestrian crossings, public transport stops, GPS / GLONASS satellites and related equipment that is equipped with public transport, as well as city cars. services and carriers, weather monitoring devices and many other devices that help make road traffic more predictable, manageable and safe. The hardware components are controlled by a software system: by analyzing the incoming data, it gives commands to the “smart” devices to execute.
Thus, the ITS provides optimal throughput of highways, helps to reduce the number of accidents, promotes compliance with traffic rules by all its participants, captures violators, with a high load on public transport and makes a recommendation to put more cars on the line, etc.
ITS will also promptly respond to worsening weather conditions. If there is fog on the road and visibility has decreased, the maximum allowed speed will be reduced, and in the event of icing on the roadway, drivers will receive an appropriate notification and recommendations on avoiding dangerous areas. Of course, road services will simultaneously receive the task of eliminating the consequences of bad weather. And in the future, ITS can and should become the basis for the widespread introduction of unmanned vehicles, which are still used in test mode on separate, specially equipped sections of roads.
ITS is usually a modular solution consisting of separate subsystems that can be implemented and put into operation sequentially. This is especially important, since each city has its own characteristics – both urban planning, economic and social. They must be taken into account when designing and deploying an intelligent transport system.
The ITS includes traffic management and recording of violations, monitoring of the environmental situation and pedestrian flows, management of parking spaces and smart public transport stops. In the presence of restrictions on the movement of freight transport, subsystems for weight and size control can also be introduced. Intelligent transport systems are created using artificial intelligence technologies, digital vision and big data. At the same time, at the first stages of creating ITS, the company introduces the most popular subsystems, which give results in the first year and become the foundation for further development of ITS.
For transport management and security, it is necessary to use domestic solutions, this is required by law. One of the most developed and popular Russian ITS is a set of products for the creation and development of intelligent transport systems from Rusatom Infrastructure Solutions (part of the state corporation Rosatom). The developer has a number of implemented ITS projects and individual solutions for the transport sector, experience in the development and implementation of ITS solutions based on existing subsystems, as well as its own developments and integration with solutions from specialized partners. RIR also has products for related areas, also related to urban management: in the field of housing and communal services, energy, interaction between authorities and residents, etc.
Let’s talk about some of the capabilities of the key subsystems of the ITS complex from RIR in more detail.
The Automated Traffic Control System (ATCS) “Smart Traffic Lights” uses efficient algorithms for managing traffic light objects and analyzes the congestion of the road network. And the public transport route management subsystem is able to plan routes, monitor their effectiveness, and also inform passengers about the time of arrival at the stopping point.
In turn, “smart” stops are responsible for the safety and comfort of public transport passengers. Such stopping pavilions will not only please with warm heated benches, a scoreboard with an interactive schedule and the presence of USB sockets, but also calculate the workload of passengers at different times, and also notify if a carrier’s transport without a license arrives at the stop.
The subsystem responsible for working with pedestrian crossings allows you to notify drivers about the presence of pedestrians on them, brightly illuminate the crossing canvas and monitor its technical condition. A number of photo and video fixation complexes (PVF) monitor moving vehicles, parking lots, improvement of road infrastructure, notice violations and fix them.
Speaking about implementations, we can mention the project in Vologda within the framework of the municipal contract. In the course of the work, more than 76 km of FOCL were installed, 105 video surveillance systems with surveillance cameras and infrared searchlights, as well as more than 300 vehicle detectors were installed. Information about the traffic situation is transmitted in real time from cameras and sensors to the established Traffic Management Center. 90% of city traffic lights are connected to ITS. And on some sections of the road, synchronization of traffic lights has been implemented, which makes it possible to speed up the movement of the traffic flow. In addition, traffic light regulation is tested in the system – both with the help of a dispatcher and automatically.
