Danish Living Lab For Bus Priority Goes Live
Buses can now get traffic light priority when they need it at the intersection of Fabriksparken and Herstedøstervej in Albertslund, Denmark. Together with DOLL Living Lab and LACROIX – City, we have installed a new traffic light controller at this intersection. The controller is connected to MobiMaestro, TNL’s platform for advanced traffic management. The system has rule-based controls as well as four FlowCube intelligent traffic sensors. Giving public transport buses priority will make travelers’ journeys smoother and faster while reducing both energy and fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
The traffic light control system is the third and final use case in the Gate21 “Grøn Bølge til Busserne” (Green Waves for Buses) project. In this public-private innovation project, innovative, data-driven solutions for prioritizing buses have been tested in Copenhagen and Ballerup. The results are very promising. The DOLL Living Lab now provides an opportunity to use the system for an extended period of time. The Albertslund system will demonstrate that it can function with traffic light controllers from various vendors, such as LACROIX. Additionally, it allows further experiments on prioritizing traffic.
Green light for buses when they need it
The traffic light controller is connected to MobiMaestro. MobiMaestro receives a recently improved data feed from Movia, the public transport agency for the Copenhagen region. The feed contains real-time data about schedules, location, speed and delays for all buses in the region. This information is processed by MobiMaestro’s algorithms. As a result, MobiMaestro knows exactly when a bus is approaching and whether it is on schedule. Using this information, MobiMaestro makes an informed decision about whether to give the bus priority. The appropriate instructions are then sent to the traffic light controller. This traffic light control system is modelled on the bus priority solution we first developed for the city of Oslo in Norway.
Classifying and counting traffic
The four FlowCubes at the intersection classify and count traffic. The FlowCube uses AI algorithms to tell different traffic modes from each other, such as bikes, cars, buses, trucks etc. It is even possible, by connecting FlowCubes, to determine which routes the traffic is taking. All the data-gathering and processing happens within the device. No data is stored, so that the FlowCube is 100% GDPR-compliant.
Long live the Living Lab
LACROIX – City provided the new traffic light controller. The controller supports RSMP (the Scandinavian Roadside Messaging Protocol) and signal plans for bus priority, and this made it possible to connect it seamlessly to MobiMaestro without extra effort. Together with the FlowCubes and the bus priority system, this living lab by DOLL Living Lab will run for a minimum of two years. This longevity now gives us a great opportunity to gather useful data and finetune the system for future applications.
