Shanghai and Beijing, the two largest cities in China, are currently facing increasing challenges in terms of road traffic congestion and air pollution. Although the cities have invested heavily in infrastructure and public transport, the increased demand in both road traffic and public transport cannot be met with the current tools. Moreover, like in all other big cities in the world, the main source of air pollution in Beijing and Shanghai is road transport.
The Viajeo project, coordinated by ERTICO, will address the above problems and implement an open platform to collect and process traffic data and provide traffic information. Four demo cities were selected: Athens, Sao Paolo, Beijing and Shanghai.
The demonstration in Beijing, developed under the leadership of Thetis, aims to facilitate multi-modal journeys. Therefore improving traveller information service is one of the main tasks. A kick-off meeting of the Beijing demo site was held on 26th October in the Thetis premises in Beijing. The kick-off meeting was attended by all work package leaders and local partners including Beijing Public Transport Holdings (BPT), Beijing Transport Research Centre (BTRC) and Research Institute of Highways (RIOH).
Following the kick-off Beijing demo site, the Shanghai partners kicked off their activities on 27th October. The Shanghai kick-off meeting was attended by all partners who are involved with the demo site including SCCTPI, Thales Software Systems Shanghai (TSSS) and CERTU. The demonstration in Shanghai aims to ingrate environmental data with existing traffic data in order to develop a sound understanding of the impacts of road transport on air quality.
After China, Brazil will also officially kick off its demo site activities on 24 November 2009. The Athens demo site is also expected to start its activities soon.
The implementation of this open platform is expected to contribute to a more complete urban transport system providing easy access to information for all travellers and to actively help reduce congestion and negative environmental impact in urban areas.
Please click here to learn more about the Viajeo project and the open platform.
More on the cities, challenges and the Viajeo solution.
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