Traffic management essentially means regulating heavy traffic areas and dealing with congested areas. It is probably the biggest problem the city administration faces because of :
- Increased vulnerability to road accidents;
- Immense emission of Greenhouse gases and
- Health issues caused by air pollution and ozone layer depletion.
It is very important to reduce frequent congestion on roads to not only reduce consumption of excessive fuel in traffic jams on signals but also to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and better toll management.
These factors have long term effects on the body on prolonged exposure to these environments like lung damage, irritation in eyes and even increased risk of skin cancer due to ozone layer depletion. There are a few reasons behind increased congestion on roads like orthodox infrastructure, no smart systems to analyse and record dynamic data and inefficient traffic signal timing. A few solutions incorporated in advanced traffic management systems are:
ROAD INTERSECTIONS MANAGEMENT
Traffic signal timing is very important and it needs to be very accurate especially on intersections. The traffic coming from all the sides of an intersection in all four directions has huge potential of colliding into each other and causing accidents. Therefore, it is important to reduce congestion in intersections. Advanced traffic management systems offer a solution to provide dynamic traffic route timing and re-timing on the basis of changing patterns of traffic present on the roads. This helps the commuters keep moving as much as possible and not waste time in red light stops. Some technologies are also trying to make the system’s algorithm prioritise emergency vehicles like ambulances.
Advanced Traffic Management Systems
This is a hybrid technology that has been put together by combining various traffic and toll management systems and softwares into one to provide the best of all worlds. ATMS not only aims to improve congestion levels and frequency at intersections but also fasten the traffic movement throughout cities. This technology comprises many micro systems in it including traffic signal trackers and monitors, a common dashboard as user interface, softwares to oversee and measure traffic flow in an area and mapping technologies for navigation. Beside other things, they plan to collaborate with the government to tap into data and give exact locations, vehicle information and vehicle-specific features.
BENEFITS of ADVANCED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS:
- Owing to less congestion on roads and intersections the air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced.
- Better traffic management saves the time of the commuters.
- When the technology is made available to all commuters, they will be able to navigate themselves away from areas of heavy traffic and vehicle movement and thus the number of road accidents will significantly go down.
HOW DOES ADVANCED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT WORKS?
Data about the traffic/vehicle movement and congestion is collected and then processed to squeeze some informative analytic outcome out of it. This data can be used by toll management systems like softwares as signals to be sent to traffic supervisors who can then guide the flow of the commuters according to it.