Leading Austrian tolling and intelligent transport systems (ITS) equipment supplier Kapsch TrafficCom has been selected by Madrid City Council to implement a new intelligent mobility system across the Spanish capital.
The purpose of the €1.9m (US$2.2m) Madrid project is to capture comprehensive data in order to accurately identify real traffic situations in the city across all mobility modes, including: pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles and cars.
As a result of the new contract, Kapsch will extend Madrid’s data-gathering system by installing a network of 120 permanent traffic counting stations, equipped with intelligent artificial vision sensors to count vehicles, as well as another 40 stations for pedestrians and cyclists, in order to continuously monitor mobility across the city’s streets.
To process the vast amount of information captured by the new counting station networks, the city council will install the Kapsch EcoTrafiX software platform – a tool designed to capture, aggregate, archive and supervise various data sources, helping municipal technicians to obtain an aggregate overview for subsequent analysis. The urban traffic management system will integrate the data obtained from the counting stations with various specific measurements, such as traffic intensities, instant speeds, directional traffic count and characterization, as well as any others considered necessary by the City Council’s General Subdirectorate for Mobility Implementation and Transportation.
Once all the Kapsch equipment and systems have been deployed, Madrid City Council will be able to analyze and identify the causes of congestion and propose efficient solutions for mitigation. The system will also consolidate the data obtained from a statistical sample of ‘sensorized’ vehicles, providing real-time information on traffic, as well as others obtained from other municipal services, such as municipal parking lots (location, usage), public street parking (SER), police reports, public transportation, and any others that may be relevant to the Madrid City Council.
Kapsch’s EcoTrafiX platform will improve Madrid city traffic data management due to its capacity to produce new types of reports and objective data. The EcoTrafiX Software Suite includes:
• Command, which commands real-time city signals and devices;
• Expert, which includes a whole set of expert modules to optimize traffic;
• Mobility, which enables collaboration on events between multiple agencies, or between multiple departments within one agency.
The result will be better management of transport infrastructures and systems, while also providing new tools to suitably plan future activities, aiming to reinforce options made available to citizens to commute.
