IBM Traffic Prediction Tool

IBM prepares the offers directed to improvement of a transport situation in Moscow. Madkhav Ragam, the director of division of IBM Growth Markets Unit who is responsible for work with a public sector, organizations of education and health care reported about it. He made a speech at a business forum "The innovative technologies: foreign experience and the Russian practice", organized by IBM corporation with assistance of the Vedomosti newspaper.^[1]

To horns emphasized that management of city traffic flows is a complex problem which solution includes social, organizational and technology components. Referring to experience of Singapore which authorities managed to cope with traffic jams, he noted the most important role of increase in attractiveness of public transport for the population of the city.

"It is only not enough to organize the selected bands for buses, it is necessary to provide that they were used for designated purpose" — Ragam noted. The setup of a system of automated management of traffic lights allowing to provide the top priority to traffic on the selected bands belongs to measures of such providing, in particular. The network cameras which are also mounted by buses fixing numbers of cars — violators of traffic regulations and quickly sending information about them in police are used.

Explained to horns need of shared control by different types of city transport for optimization of flows of passengers and reduction of waiting time on transfer nodes (began with it in Singapore, considering constantly high temperature and humidity in the city).

It is also necessary to provide providing in the on-line mode of information on a transport situation and about changes in schedules of runs for what transfer nodes and stops of public transport should be equipped with electronic information displays.

It is also not less important to provide a possibility of convenient payment of journey taking into account the tariff policy accepted in the city. Load of a system of accounting of transport cards makes in Singapore a rush hours 650 transactions per second, and the gross performance of this system reaches 10 million transactions a day.

For reduction of car traffics in the city zones of paid journey and the electronic system of a payment for stay of cars are entered into them; rates for visit of paid zones vary depending on a season, time of day and some other factors.

When a similar system was tested by IBM together with NXP company in Holland, cars were supplied with onboard devices with the built-in GPS receivers according to which the location of the machine was defined. These data were transferred on GPRS network to the billing system determining fare taking into account a route and also all additional parameters.

Specialists of IBM create the system of forecasting of traffic flows of IBM Traffic Prediction Tool. According to the published data, forecasting accuracy in the central regions of Singapore of motion speed and volume of steams of cars considerably exceeded 85%. This system gives an opportunity to expect the most probable changes of traffic in the set time frames (from 10 to 60 minutes) that it allows to increase significantly efficiency of elimination of overloads of automobile routes in the large cities.

"Transport is one of the most important systems of the large cities. There it is necessary to have means of intellectual planning of traffic flows and management of them" — Ragam considers.

This year results of the first global research of transport problems, IBM Commuter Pain Survey which demonstrate lag of transport infrastructure of the different cities of the world from their economic development are published.

The situation in Moscow, according to a research, is characterized considerable waiting time in transport traffic jams. Within three last years the average duration of the longest stay of drivers in transport jams was two and a half hours. Answers of more than 40% of the Moscow respondents confirm existence of traffic jams because of which duration of a trip increased for three hours. More than 60% of the polled drivers indicated deterioration in a transport situation in the capital of Russia for the same three years, and nearly a half of them consider deterioration very considerable.

Singapore is not the only city of the world where technologies of IBM are applied to the solution of transport problems. Management systems for vedena traffic in action in Dublin, London, Stockholm and some other the cities. Now, perhaps, IBM will be engaged in such project and in Moscow: Confirmed to horns that the corporation prepares offers for the capital mayor.

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