Intelligent transport systems (ITS) apply different technologies to monitor, evaluate and manage transport networks to enhance safety and mobility, increase sustainability and city liveability, and minimise network costs.
A key application of ITS in Australia is via smart motorways, which use information, communication, and control systems to boost efficiency and safety.
Innovations around smart motorways include coordinated ramp metering, variable speed limits, lane use control, incident detection, traveller information, and CCTV surveillance.
Variable speed limits, as an example, improve road safety by reducing the speed differential between vehicles and creating more homogenous flows, minimising lane changing and braking caused by speed differentials, and increasing the time for drivers to react to changing conditions. Moreover, along with reducing the likelihood of an impact, variable speed limits also reduce their severity if an impact does occur.
Research in the United States has shown ITS could prevent about 400,000 to 600,000 accidents a year, while also reducing travel times by about 42 per cent. Furthermore, ITS can reduce fuel consumption for passenger vehicles by up to 44 per cent and for trucks by up to 18 per cent.
In 2022, traffic engineers from the University of Melbourne, along with the Victorian Department of Transport and Austrian technology company Kapsch TrafficCom, introduced a world- leading traffic management system in Melbourne’s inner-city suburb of Carlton.
The technology enabled the creation of an ‘intelligent corridor’ over a 2.5-kilometre stretch of road with the aim of reducing traffic jams and improving road safety at one of the city’s busiest traffic hotspots.
The system features sensors, cloud-based AI, machine learning algorithms, predictive models, and real-time data capture, which all work together to reduce congestion as well as emissions from clogged traffic.
Leveraging various traffic sensors already installed by the Australian Integrated Multimodal EcoSystem (AIMES), the system is being fine-tuned by the project team and is expected to be deployed this year. A key aim of the project is to collect before-and-after data to demonstrate the corridor’s effectiveness.
AIMES is the world’s first and largest ecosystem for testing emerging connected transport technologies on a large scale in complex urban environments. It incorporates more than 100 kilometres of road network in Melbourne, in an area bounded by Lygon and Hoddle Streets and Victoria and Alexandra Parades.
The intelligent corridor represents a new phase of development within this ecosystem, providing greater levels of monitoring through sensors at every intersection.
Professor Majid Sarvi, AIMES Director and Professor of Transport Engineering at the University of Melbourne, said the corridor would provide a model for cities around the world to reduce the costs of urban congestion. Urban congestion costs the Australian economy $16.5 billion in travel delays every year, according to Infrastructure Australia’s Infrastructure Audit Report 2019.
Professor Sarvi said: “In Melbourne alone, 492 people lost their lives in crashes at urban intersections – with more than half of these being pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists – between 2006 and 2019.
“Our intelligent corridor will use the latest technology to better manage traffic and make our roads safer for everyone.”
Another project from University of Melbourne researchers is a collaboration with Telstra that aims to model the impact of smart traffic lights that communicate with freight vehicles, and prioritise them at intersections while minimising the impact on other road users.
It is estimated traffic congestion costs the Australian economy about $20 billion a year, a cost that is expected to more than double by 2030, while freight costs have increased by 50 per cent in the last decade as a result of major freight bottlenecks disrupting the efficient delivery of goods.
Dr Renata Borovica-Gajic, Senior Lecturer in Data Analytics at the University of Melbourne’s School of Computing and Information Systems, noted that even small improvement could mitigate the environmental and economic impact of heavy traffic.
She said: “If even just 10 per cent of vehicles on the road could be connected and send their GPS coordinates, that alone can have a big impact. “We have seen huge benefits [to traffic flow] when 10 to 20 per cent of vehicles are being connected for solutions such as dynamic traffic signal control or lane reconfiguration – we are not talking about all or nothing.”
The enabling technology for the project was provided by Telstra, which initially ran a pilot project involving five traffic lights in Wollongong.
Dr Borovica-Gajic added: “Telstra has really great technology in this space – they have a capability to connect freight vehicles and send their positions to an intelligent traffic management system.
“But where they needed our expertise, prior to real-life deployment, was in understanding the broader impact on city-level traffic.”
Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) is also engaged in a study of advanced technologies for road user detection, sensing, and perception, aiming to enhance traffic operations at signalised intersections.
Various traffic management strategies are being adopted by TMR, such as modal priority, adaptive control, emergency vehicle pre-emption, and smart pedestrian crossing.
These strategies rely on technology to detect and sense different road users in varying contexts.
Main Roads WA’s upgrade of the Kwinana Freeway northbound in Perth, which was completed in 2020, features an ITS that uses road sensors, detection radars and CCTV cameras to monitor traffic conditions and adjust them in real time.
With the aim of improving traffic flow and ultimately congestion, controllers can change speed limits when needed, use ramp signals to make merging easier during busy periods, and open or close lanes as necessary. Drivers from Roe Highway to the Narrows Bridge now save up to 10 minutes on journey times.
In early 2023, work began to implement a range of technologies southbound on Perth’s Mitchell Freeway, including 16 coordinated ramp signals from Hester Avenue to Vincent Street and additional technologies being considered at key locations closer to the CBD.
