The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has selected Monotch as the supplier of a nationwide C-ITS platform that will provide data exchange between road users and roadside systems such as intelligent traffic control systems, barriers and sensors.
The C-ITS platform, called UDAP (Urban Data Access Platform), will contribute to traffic flow, road safety, and sustainability in the Netherlands. In addition to delivering their TLEX I2V software platform, Monotch will also be responsible for overseeing the data exchange’s quality, security, and privacy.
National traffic data platform
At the end of September, Monotch signed a 4 to 8-year exclusive contract with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management for the data services. All intelligent traffic light controllers in the Netherlands will be using the new platform, fully operational from January 1st 2021. UDAP receives data from all kinds of objects (regardless of the supplier) and delivers this automatically, but conversely also receives (anonymised) travel and vehicle-related data from road users. UDAP uses TLEX, which was previously applied in the Innovation Partnership Talking Traffic. The data collection and exchange via UDAP are of significant added value for both road users and authorities and knowledge and research institutions.
TLC use cases immediately live
Right from January 2021, the TLC (Traffic Light Controller) use cases ‘informing, prioritising and optimising’ will deliver major benefits for municipalities and road users. Such as informing road users (Information service), in which data from TLCs can be used to inform and advise road users about advisory speeds for a green wave, time-to-green and time-to red, e.g.
Or prioritising certain road users (Priority service), whereby emergency services, freight traffic, public transport and cyclists can get priority at traffic lights. But also optimising traffic flows (Optimizing service), where data from vehicles are used for traffic control so that traffic can flow more smoothly over a longer distance and on more significant parts of the road network.
Further upscaling
The number of connected, intelligent TLCs will be scaled up nationally in the coming years. In addition, other types of objects are currently being linked, such as tire pressure measurement systems, bollards and sensors incorporated into the road surface. Many thousands of objects will be connected within a few years.
Reliable, fast, safe and precise data
To the core task of UDAP, the reliable exchange of intelligent TLC data and vehicle travel data in milliseconds, four essential extra functions were added: quality control, quality monitoring, a link with other objects, and a Priority Broker Configurator function. The status of all data is displayed in dashboards with, among other things, the status of the connected objects, the extent of data exchange tests, whether a vehicle is authorised, and real-time reports on use cases.
Immediately yielding traffic flow benefits
Vincent Habers, who supervised the European tender on behalf of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management for the public-private partnership Talking Traffic, indicates that Monotch already has a great deal of experience working with intelligent TLCs. “With UDAP, we will go one step further with the service. We expect that UDAP will immediately yield benefits for traffic flows in many municipalities and that a range of different service providers can develop all kinds of useful in-car information services based on the data”.
