The Flanders Mobilidata program and a consortium of smart mobility industry partners led by Be-Mobile are implementing a cloud platform that connects intelligent traffic lights in the Flanders region of Belgium and enables information to be exchanged with road users.
The TLEX cloud platform, produced by the Dutch company Monotch, is at the heart of the Mobilidata system and will eventually exchange millions of items of data every minute. The data exchange at approximately 250 intelligent traffic lights in Flanders will be a major step towards safer, smoother, more comfortable and sustainable traffic in Flanders by the end of 2023.
Monotch is rolling out the TLEX platform as a subcontractor of the Mobilidata consortium. The current installation is a continuation of a system that already connects more than a thousand intelligent traffic lights in the Netherlands.
“Some 15 years ago, as I was just starting out as a researcher, I came across this concept of smart traffic lights that exchange data,” says Wim Vandenberghe, senior advisor ITS at Mobilidata. “Despite all international research efforts in this field, there was only one country in the world that had actually rolled this out on a large scale to the day-to-day lives of road users: the Netherlands, via the Talking Traffic program. The fact that Flanders, thanks to the Mobilidata program, is now rolling out smart traffic lights and at the same time further developing the technology, is a world-class achievement we can be very proud of.”
Mark Walker, project manager, Monotch adds: “Commissioning of the Traffic Light Exchange (TLEX) is a significant step in the development of smart mobility for Flanders. It enables the secure and reliable exchange of information between road users and traffic lights which can be used to make the transport system safer, more efficient, and more environmentally sustainable.”
The Mobilidata program was launched by the Flemish public authorities Agency for Roads and Traffic, Department of Mobility and Public Works, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Agency and the Department of Economy, Science, and Innovation. The program is coordinated by strategic research centre imec and receives additional financial support from the European Union (Connecting Europe Facility, CEF).
