Projects
Current Projects
The SCATS Priority Engine (SPE)
The Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) of NSW commissioned Prioritize to develop the the SCATS Priority Engine. The SPE is an extension to SCATS allowing authorised clients to issue signal priority requests on behalf of certain vehicle types such as public transport vehicles (such as buses and light rail), freight vehicles, and emergency vehicles.
Main Features
- Secured standard web based client access to the SPE.
- Web based Administrator GUI to configure the system. The GUI also offers a map based features showing, in realtime, colour-coded representation of the progress of priority requests and a tabular based form for priority requests stats at each site.
- Utilisation of accurate spatial representations of SCATS intersections based on the J2735 standard as produced by the SCATS Spatial Date Integration (SSDI) package. The SPE offers an advanced mechanism for synchronising this spatial data with clients.
- Sophisticated algorithms for choosing the best phase(s) for priority for any given request.
- Sophisticated algorithms for managing complementary priority requests and resolving conflicting ones based on priority scores (e.g. how late a public transport vehicle is).
- Clients can update issued priority requests (to reflect changes to arrival times and/or vehicle scores) and end priority requests when the corresponding vehicles are detected to have crossed the intersection.
- Comprehensive realtime feedback to clients on the states and progress of priority requests.
- A suit of graphical historic on the Admin GUI reports showing priority requests aggregates, statistics and other aspects that may require further investigation.
Current State
The SPE live trials started on PTIPS tracked public transport buses in the city of Wollongong south of Sydney. These trials provided valuable feedback the led to further improvements. A number of SCATS intersections are currently enabled for bus priority in Sydney’s eastern suburbs as well buses servicing the Liverpool-Parramatta Transitway (LPT) in Sydney’s western suburbs. These latter bus services follow, mostly, exclusive paths and receive a higher level of priority by the SPE. A rollout to other intersections in Sydney (and other cities in NSW) is currently being planned by the RMS.
The city of Adelaide, South Australia is in advanced planning stage for “Connected Vehicles” or “Cooperative ITS” trials including signal priority using the ETSI standard. The SPE will for conveying vehicle priority requests to SCATS. The trials will start early 2019.
The SPE was also used in freight priority trials as part of the so-called Premiere’s Initiative with a significant Prioritize contribution (see below).
PAST PROJECTS
The Truck Priority Engine (TPE)
The TPE is a software component developed by Prioritize for the RMS to interface to vehicle and roadside equipment utilising the ETSI standard for C-ITS (Cooperative ITS). The vehicle On-Board Unit (or OBU) uses DSRC (Direct Short Range Communications) to exchange messages with Road Side Units (or RSUs) that are integrated to the SCATS traffic light controllers. These messages are then conveyed to the TPE via the SCATS network. The two types of messages used for priority are the Cooperative Awareness Message (CAM) that conveys the location of the vehicle and the Signal Request Message (SRM) that requests priority on behalf of the vehicle. The TPE utilises both types of messages and applies some business rules to translate these messages into SPE priority requests that are then activated at the corresponding SCATS intersections. Both the OBUs and RSUs are developed by Cohda Wireless.
This work was part of the so-called Premiere’s Initiative in NSW to prioritise freight vehicles along three main arterial corridors in Sydney: Parramatta Road, King Georges Road, and Pennant Hills Road. Data collected from the trials (including SPE generated data) is now being analysed to quantify the benefits and assess the performance in general.
PTIPS
The Public Transport and Information Priority System is a collection of software and hardware that tracks buses, grants them priority at traffic signals, and provides realtime arrival information to the public.
PTIPS began as a research collaboration between the University of Technology, NSW and the then Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW. Ghassan Jarjees developed the core concepts that formed the basis of PTIPS during his doctoral thesis on Information Theory. In 2005 the then Ministry of Transport invested heavily in the project and efforts turned towards turning PTIPS in a production system.
Currently the biggest installation of PTIPS is operated by Transport for NSW and tracks over 5000 buses in greater metropolitan Sydney, Newcastle, and Wollongong.
The key benefits of PTIPS are:
- More reliable bus services through traffic signal priority. PTIPS interfaces with SCATS to provide effective and measure priority that takes care not to exacerbate existing traffic congestion.
- Data collection and analysis of the performance of bus services used to manage $2.1b worth of Bus Services Contracts.
- Realtime passenger information, which feeds smartphone apps for the public such as TripView, TripGo, and Arrivo.
TfNSW Live Traffic Website
The Live Traffic website, operated by the NSW Transport Management Centre, provides NSW commuters with up to the minute updates on traffic incidents and conditions that allows them to make informed choices regarding their journeys. Prioritize was contracted to provide development management and software engineering expertise during the analysis and implementation phases of this project.
CURRENT PROJECTS
SCATS Priority Engine
Prioritize is consulting to the Roads and Maritime Services in specifying a new traffic signal priority interface to their traffic system, SCATS. This new interface will provide the capability to automatically handle traffic light priority requests from different types of vehicle tracking systems, not just buses as was the case in the past.
SCATS Coordination Performance Reporting
Prioritize is currently engaged with Roads and Maritime Services in NSW on the development of software to assess the coordination performance of a SCATS installation across pairs of traffic signals using actual vehicle travel times. As part of this work, we are working with nanosimulation software, Commuter, including writing plugins for it that collect simulated travel times for testing the comparative analysis techniques being developed.
PTIPS in Shanghai, China
Prioritize is currently contracted to Tyco to provide support for the PTIPS installation in the Pudong district of Shanghai, China. This requires close liaison with the Pudong branch of the Public Security Bureau, who run the SCATS traffic control system in that district.