A future of traffic management: toward a hybrid system of roadside and personal mobile devices

In the last few decades, increasing traffic has led to serious problems in urban areas. Travel times for travellers have increased and the liveability in residential areas has declined due to pollution and issues concerning safety. Whereas new road and rail infrastructure in densely populated areas is costly, a better utilisation of existing infrastructure appears to be more attractive. This becomes increasingly possible due to huge developments in the world of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). However, implementing ICT solutions for the purpose of traffic management remains challenging. First, it is quite a task to set up a system in which infrastructure, travel vehicles and travellers can communicate with each other. Secondly, it is quite difficult to gather and exchange traffic and travel information in such a way that the traffic situation improves significantly. This paper deals with the latter issue, and it provides an outline for the possible architecture of a future traffic management system. It concludes that in such a system both mobile devices, like smartphones and navigation systems, and roadside devices, like loop detectors and cameras, need to be included to arrive at optimal results.