Amey Consulting, working with Transport for West Midlands, has developed Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory (GLOSA), a system designed to combat traffic congestion by alerting drivers to traffic light changes.
A45 GLOSA, which received the project of the year award from Intelligent Transport Systems UK, was installed and tested in Birmingham, UK, on the A45 Coventry road; the system alerts drivers to imminent light changes, enabling them to adjust their speed and avoid having to brake sharply between intersections. During the pilot test, drivers’ travel time was reduced by 7%.
The test consisted of letting the technology monitor traffic lights on ten intersections and send details to a passenger’s smartphone. The system predicted light changes, enabling drivers to adopt the optimal speed when approaching the intersection.
The idea is to expand the system quickly and cheaply to other routes, since the application is readily adaptable to car onboard computers and satnav devices in the future. The system is innovative as it only uses existing infrastructure currently in use by a road authority, therefore it can be easily extended and adopted by other road authorities. The system will be fine-tuned in an extended trial covering a wider range of junction arrangements and control technologies in 2019.
Paul Rose, ITS Technical Director for Amey Consulting on this project, said: “This is a very important project for Amey Consulting, not only because it represents a real opportunity to explore the benefits of emerging use cases for connected vehicles, but also because it showcases our capacity for innovation and systems integration.“
