ATMO

1.

The regional, and thus heterogeneous, nature of the road network: a variety scale levels, of physical features, of road authorities with their own policies. The main challenge here has to do with: what should the organisation look like; how can all involved parties be brought together; how can the different policies and interests be united? Already, important (transition!) lessons can be learnt from experience gained with the Regionlab-Delft project.

2.

The heterogeneous nature of traffic data: when different parties have been brought together and the decision has been taken to collectively monitor traffic, the different types of data sources need to be combined somehow and the resulting data has to be made accessible.

3.

Reliability and availability of the data and the robustness of the monitoring system. Traffic and transport management is only possible when reliable information is available. For, management based on incorrect, or even missing information can lead to unwanted results, or possibly even results opposite to what was intended. The figure below schematically illustrates that particularly in (adverse) conditions when traffic information is required most, these often are not reliable, or even available. With 'adverse conditions' it is referred to events such severe congestion (due to whatever reason), accidents, road works, exceptional situations, et cetera.

4.

When all required information is available, and it is clear that the information is reliable, is this sufficient to enable traffic management that achieves traffic operations that are more efficient, cleaner, safer and more reliable ??? To assess the improvement of the efficiency and the impact on the environment, knowledge on travel times, speeds, and flows can be adequate, but how about safety and reliability (of, for example, the required travel time on specific connections)? How can these be measured and monitored, or deduced from other data? What are the demands this poses on the data and the measurement systems. Further, for all objectives, in fact, information is needed on the near future, as to allow anticipation on the approaching conditions. This means that on a network wide scale traffic conditions have to be predicted.