Bordeaux Metropole organised a two-day City Twining Workshop, held in Bordeaux on 21-22 November, where cities were invited to exchange best practices for using C-ITS services in traffic management.
CEREMA, IFSTTAR, ATEC ITS, the cities of Strasbourg (Eurometropole Strasbourg) and the wider city of Lyon (Grand Lyon Metropole) were joined by the French Ministry (DIR Atlantique) and the Bordeaux Metropole at the workshop where they debated the use Floating Car Data in traffic management.
The discussion focused on enhanced traffic management concepts such as the innovative proposal for traffic stakeholder cooperation, TM 2.0 and the work under the French project, Scoop@F. ERTICO-ITS Europe’s Innovation and Deployment Director, Johanna Tzanidaki, attended the meeting in Bordeaux and presented ERTICO and the work it has achieved within the TM 2.0 Innovation Platform on Enhanced Traffic Management, since 2014. She also explained the importance of TM 2.0 in the field of Connected Cooperative and Automated Mobility (including the European Commission Delegated Regulations).
The European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE), represented by Pedro Barradas, presented the C-ITS Platform’s conclusions on enhanced traffic management and discussed the their plans with regards to Connected and Cooperative Automated Mobility. The European Commission plans to set up a Testing Task Force, comprised of Member States and Industry, that will develop a Road Map with nine actions to be presented to the ITS Advisory Committee. These nine actions will form the basis of the forthcoming ITS Delegated Regulation on C-ITS in 2018.
INRIX and TomTom were present at the meeting, along with Autoroutes Trafic and PTV, and explained how the industry is making use of Floating Card Data (FCD) and the opportunities this brings for traffic management. Participants heard that vehicles today produce one terabyte of FCD per hour and were told that this plethora of data can be utilised to the benefit of traffic management authorities and cities should not be afraid to use it. Cities on the other hand stated their reluctance to use FCD as there is not yet enough penetration (‘connected cars on the road’). Industry participants explained that ‘connected’ does not necessarily mean that vehicles should use a special device embedded in the system- even “a mobile in the passenger’s back pocket makes a vehicle ‘connected”.
As cities still struggle with recognising FDC and its value, European traffic service providers are already identifying the threat coming from private companies that collect FCD data, not with the aim of optimising traffic management but to use it commercially. It is these providers which operate outside the rules that, through their unregulated data collection, can manipulate traffic information provided to their users so that they meet their commercial objectives (i.e. send drivers via a specific route that serves their commercial agreement with a Point of Interest (POI)).
The Bordeaux Metropole is one of the eight leading European cities, in the area of cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS), engaged in the C-MobILE project (Accelerating C-ITS Mobility Innovation and depLoyment in Europe) which follows in the footsteps of previous pilot deployment projects – Compass4D and CO-GISTICS. C-MobILE kicked off its Stakeholders Forum on 23 November in Bilbao with a workshop on stakeholders needs and requirements for large scale C-ITS deployment involving public authorities, transport operators, end-users groups and mobility solutions providers.
The Bordeaux Metropole is very active in making the best use of FCD and is promoting City Twinning for exchanging best practices with regards to traffic management and C-ITS services. This event was organised by the C-the Difference project, which ERTICO is not a member of but cooperates via partners of the C-Mobile project. C-MobILE is an IDIADA–led project facilitated by ERTICO. The two projects will be cooperating with each other to host a common event at the ITS World Congress in Copenhagen taking place in October 2018.
