Athens is one of the four Viajeo test sites – the others being Beijing, Shanghai and São Paulo - and the only European one. It is the largest city in Greece with over 4 million inhabitants and increasing car ownership. Like its peers in the Viajeo project, Athens is facing ever increasing road congestion with its attendant air pollution. Moreover, real-time traffic information service has been lagging behind relevant European markets, despite a legal breakthrough in 2006.
There is no panacea, but part of the solution lies with improving the efficiency of the road network, and this is where Viajeo steps in.
The Viajeo project, coordinated by ERTICO, will implement an open platform to collect and process traffic data and provide traffic information. The information provided to the residents and visitors of Athens will enable them to choose the appropriate transport mode or modes for their journeys, all in real time.
The Viajeo project, led in Athens by INFOTRIP and with the collaboration of MIZAR Automazione, CERTH/HIT, ANCO and Magnetti Marelli will collect floating vehicle data from up to 300 vehicles and integrate it with existing traffic data collected from other sources. This data, coupled with the constantly growing historical traffic database, will enable the accurate forecast of traffic conditions and thus dynamic route guidance.
Real-time and historical traffic data is processed by the open platform to forecast traffic conditions of the entire road network which will also be used for real-time traffic operation by traffic operators. Moreover the open platform will collect real-time data to maintain a historical database for city-level transport planning strategy for local authorities.
The Viajeo project kicked off at the ITS World Congress in Stockholm, 2009. Since then, the Athens partners have already clearly delineated their roles and responsibilities, identified stakeholders, completed the identification and description of Athens’s current and proposed services and put together the initial system architecture.
Future Viajeo services to be available at the Athens test site include taxi fleet management and traffic information, end user multi-modal trip planning and traffic information and an observatory for public authorities and traffic planners.
But the Athens Partners are not resting on their laurels. Upcoming activities include development of a local user forum and a one day workshop. Watch this space for more details!
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