Past winners of Intertraffic Innovation Awards from the Netherlands and the Czech Republic are partnering on a ‘smart city’ project to monitor on-street parking in the Turkish city of Izmir.
Izmir is a major metropolitan city located on the Mediterranean Sea, and with four million inhabitants, it is the third most populous city in Turkey after Istanbul and Ankara. In this densely populated city, the number of vehicles continues to increase, and as a consequence, traffic congestion and the demand for parking spaces is growing. Besides improving the coordination of metros, buses and urban ferries, the city of Izmir has decided to invest in its road infrastructure. In 2015, the Greater Izmir Metropolitan Municipality started implementing a fully adaptive traffic management, control and information system, which is the first comprehensive metropolitan traffic management system to be implemented in Turkey. The project was awarded to two Czech companies in a joint venture: intelligent transportation systems (ITS) developer Cross; and AZD Praha, a producer and supplier of signaling, telecommunication, information and automation technologies.
Winner of the Overall Innovation and Smart Mobility Awards at Intertraffic 2016 for its InVipo traffic control and information platform, Cross is a Certified Partner for Dutch company Nedap, winner of the Intertraffic Parking Innovation Award for its Sensit wireless vehicle detection system in 2006.
The Izmir project is the first result from the strategic partnership between the companies, which was announced last year. As part of the city-wide traffic management implementation, 2,000 on-street parking spaces have been equipped with Nedap’s Sensit wireless parking sensor system. The Sensit system consists of wireless bay-mounted sensors that detect the vehicle occupancy status and duration of parking events at single parking spots. The parking sensors use magnetic and infrared dual-detection technology to ensure accurate vehicle occupancy monitoring. The system deploys a fast and robust wireless radio communication network, which is essential for outdoor parking applications in urban areas.
Accurate real-time parking data from the Sensit system is transmitted to InVipo, where it is fully-integrated into the traffic management platform. InVipo sends the parking information to a city-wide network of variable message signs (VMS) that allows motorists to quickly find a vacant spot to park in. Sensit enables the city’s parking operator to detect violations in zones for paid, time-restricted, and disabled parking. Understanding the usage and demand of parking spaces enables the city to roll out smarter customized parking programs in different areas in order to reduce traffic congestion and to increase the use of existing parking spaces.
The InVipo platform enables constant control of traffic flows, adjustment of traffic signal timings at intersections, response in the event of incidents, and the detection of traffic build-up. By having parking occupancy information from the Sensit system on board, InVipo also gathers extensive knowledge about the real-time usage of parking spaces across the city, and can control traffic flows accordingly.
