A Swiss-German-Austrian consortium has been awarded a major contract to implement a new core traffic management system for the Austrian tolled motorway network by the government-owned operator, ASFINAG Maut Service.
The Austrian government gave the go-ahead for the new Traffic Management and Information System 2.0 (VMIS 2.0) Core System and Operating GUI (Graphical User Interface) in April, and the ARGE VMIS-EHE consortium has now won the tender.
This is one of the world’s largest traffic management projects, and when completed, the VMIS 2.0 system will form the basis for further/future vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications sub-systems. The winning consortium consists of: EBP Schweiz (Switzerland), Heusch/Boesefeldt (Germany), and Evon (Austria). The consortium and project management will be led by EBP Deutschland from its offices in Berlin, Germany.
To appreciate the complexity of the project, the consortium notes that more than 33,000 traffic control devices will be integrated into the new system, over a total road length of 1,356 miles (2,183km). This includes approximately 160 tunnels. In future, more than 200 ASFINAG employees will ensure the highest possible level of traffic flow on Austria’s main road arteries through their use of VMIS 2.0 and its GUI at six regional traffic management centers.
The central focus of the VMIS 2.0 contract is on the development, commissioning, migration, operation and continued development of the core traffic management system, and the unified operating graphical interface for all traffic management centers operated by ASFINAG. The new traffic management core system, analog to the existing system, will consist of several regional traffic management centers and an overall traffic control center with the following functions:
• Monitoring, control, configuration and parametrization of roadside equipment;
• Comprehensive automation of systems using a new control model;
• Data source for different customers within (VMIS 2.0 Central Data Management + Reporting) and outside (e.g. traffic information services) the VMIS 2.0 context;
• Provision of interfaces for external systems, in particular opening the system control to external systems, such as cooperative services, and for the direct communication between sub-centers and tunnel systems;
• System-wide cross-sectional functions, such as notification management, user and rights management, geo-manager;
• Traffic engineering workstation for the processing and optimization of traffic-related configurations and parameter settings.
The new operator GUI is intended to offer a unified and modern interface for all ASFINAG staff using technical traffic management equipment. This includes the operation of existing traffic-related systems in tunnels and a number of other systems in the periphery of traffic management, such as emergency call services, event management, and video.
One important aspect of replacing the existing systems will be the seamless and uninterrupted migration to the new systems with uninterrupted operation. The contract also stipulates that not only is the development, commissioning and migration part of the works, but also the further development of the traffic-related core system and the operator GUI.
This includes continuous maintenance, as well as the continuous further development of the VMIS 2.0 system. The planned service life of VMIS 2.0 is 17 years.
