Sweco and Vialis to work on smart ring of Almelo

By the end of this year, the traffic lights at 27 intersections on and near the Almelo ring road must be intelligently controlled. Engineering consultancy Sweco and solution provider Vialis were jointly awarded this contract by the municipality of Almelo.

Royal VolkerWessels company Vialis will take care of the conversion of the traffic control installations into intelligent traffic control installations (iVRIs). Sweco will control these iVRIs at the 27 intersections with Smart Traffic.

Smart Traffic has predictive capability; it does not assume the current supply of vehicles, but rather makes a prediction at what time a vehicle will arrive at the traffic light. With pre-5G, and later 5G, KPN is ensuring that traffic lights can communicate with road users, Smart Traffic and with other traffic lights. Each traffic light therefore also knows the status of the other traffic lights in the Almelo ring road network. In this way, Smart Traffic optimizes each individual intersection and at the same time optimizes traffic flows on the entire ring road. Certain traffic participants, such as freight traffic or cyclists, can get green faster thanks to the software.

The improved traffic flow should result in fewer emissions (noise, particulate matter, CO₂) and improved road safety.

DOWNTOWN ACCESSIBILITY

Almelo has a butterfly structure, which means that large green areas penetrate deep into the city. This has the downside that the distances within the city are relatively large compared to the number of inhabitants (73,000). In the municipality's mobility vision, accessibility to the inner city and working areas play a major role alongside livability, safety and sustainability. Moreover, the municipality wants to be at the forefront of mobility innovations, social-organizational, digital and technical.

Rob Hulleman, senior Traffic Engineer at the Municipality of Almelo: 'We have the ambition to make our infrastructure ready for the future and to improve livability in the city. Application of Smart Traffic fully fits this task.'

If the implementation of Smart Traffic on the ring road proves successful, the city's ambition is to smartly control and connect all traffic light-controlled intersections in the city.

TALKING TRAFFIC

The partners in this project are the Municipality of Almelo, Vialis and Sweco. With pre-5G, and later 5G, KPN will ensure that the traffic lights can communicate with road users and Smart Traffic. Together they realize the future-proof infrastructure for the Municipality of Almelo and the Province of Overijssel. The ambition and cooperation stems from the Talking Traffic cooperation program, a public-private initiative of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (IenW) with many municipalities and provinces throughout the Netherlands. This program focuses on innovation in traffic, transportation, mobility and urban development.

'The implementation of Smart Traffic on the Almelo ring road is truly a team-effort of the Municipality of Almelo, Vialis and Sweco. We are grateful to the Ministry and the province of Overijssel for their financial support, because with this project we can work together on smart mobility systems of the future in the Netherlands,' says Rob Hulleman.

EVALUATION

The University of Twente is going to rigorously evaluate the functioning of a number of traffic lights (called TINA-4) and is specifically looking at the effects on freight traffic. In Q1/Q2 of 2020, it will conduct an evaluation of the functioning of those traffic lights on behalf of I&W.