Urban traffic optimisation

A project for Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) demonstrates Steria’s use of traffic-level computation based on real-time vehicle data gathering

Singapore has one of the best traffic management systems and road networks in the world. Despite this, however, the LTA wanted to enhance its system and optimise its road infrastructure to improve urban traffic flows. The monitoring of traffic conditions in real-time was key to LTA’s quest for excellence in its land transport system.

The authority sought an intelligent transport system to collect taxi location and speed. It had to process the traffic data collected and provide the LTA with an overall view of congestion areas. In addition, the system had to send information to the public via a web-based geographical information system (GIS). Steria’s TrafficScan solution provided the answer. It allows up to 20,000 taxis fitted with GPS devices to transmit information about their location and speed. This is sent in real-time to a central system. The system sends traffic reports to the LTA and to the public via a GIS accessible over the internet.

TrafficScan’s functionality includes: 

• Collection of traffic data (localisation, speed, passengers, etc) via taxis fitted with GPS devices
• Processing of the data collected using statistical sampling and neural algorithms (average speed calculation, queues detection, travel times, etc.)
• Animated geographical information display on a web portal for road users
• Innovation enhances the accuracy of traffic level computation.

The true novelty of this system lies in its use of the city’s taxis to collect data. This avoids the need to roll out and maintain a costly infrastructure of sensors and cameras. The traffic reports allow the LTA to identify congestion in the road network and take remedial action. Road users are able to plan and optimise their routes. Steria partnered with the LTA for this machine to machine (M2M) project to interconnect automated systems within a business process.