German transportation software developer PTV Group has revealed its role in a major project to provide the Australian city of Sydney and the surrounding state of New South Wales (NSW), with one of the world’s most advanced transportation management systems.
As announced earlier this week, Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) awarded the overall US$35m contract for Sydney’s Intelligent Congestion Management Program (ICMP) to Cubic Transportation Systems’ (CTS) business division. The program aims to replace the region’s current traffic management system, which was built for the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. The prime objective of the new system, which will be delivered in 2020, is to predict 30 minutes into the future and act within five minutes. The implementation of the system will allow TfNSW to coordinate public transportation and provide customers with information about disruptions or alternative routes in real time. Operators will be pointed to where unusual traffic conditions exist on the roads, allowing faster detection and clearance of incidents, due to automatically generated congestion alerts.
As part of the ICMP, PTV will deliver real-time traffic estimation and prediction software platforms, high-speed computing, and a reliable decision support system. The new setup will improve Sydney’s Transport Management Center (TMC) by making faster, more informed decisions, automating current manual processes, making passenger journeys more reliable and reducing the cost of congestion. PTV says the new project will highlight its ability to deliver intelligent mobility solutions similar to the company’s successful implementations of traffic management systems in Vienna, Moscow, Abu Dhabi or Taiwan.
As one of the key partners for the NSW project, PTV will provide and support a technology platform integrating the operational management systems for all modes of transportation in the Sydney area, coupled with the most up-to-date data, statistics and intelligence on transport operations. As part of the project, PTV’s Optima software platform will be implemented in the greater Sydney area in two phases over the next 24 months. Additionally, the company’s Visum modeling suite will be used as the comprehensive software system for strategic traffic and transportation planning, in particular for infrastructure planning and operational analysis. Visum has full GIS functionality with multiple assignment methods available, including static and dynamic assignments.
Andrew Constance, NSW’s Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, stated that the new system will significantly improve Sydney’s TMC. “Technology is rapidly changing the way people move around Sydney, driverless Metro trains will start carrying customers next year, and driverless cars are already being tested on NSW roads,” Constance noted. “This will future-proof our transport management system for these innovations, so we can better manage congestion and respond to incidents faster, as well as preparing for new transport infrastructure in the pipeline.”
Omid Ejtemai, PTV’s Asia-Pacific regional managing director, commented, “The new system for Sydney will become one of the world’s largest real-time transportation management solutions. It has a task to detect, analyze and predict traffic states in order to resolve a lot of complex transportation issues. As strategic partner for the installation, configuration and testing of the predictive engine, we are looking forward to supporting the region with this landmark project.”
