This year’s ITS Europe Congress was jointly hosted by the municipalities of Eindhoven and Helmond (a CoEXist partner) from 3-6 June. More than 1200 delegates from over 50 countries took part in this congress under the banner ‘Fulfilling ITS promises’. CoEXist was represented at the congress by several partners and had the opportunity to share its findings in a special congress session as well as a technical session.
Peter Sukennik from PTV presented the technical paper ‘AV-ready traffic flow simulation models and assignments’, which was co-authored by PTV and the University of Stuttgart. After a short introduction to the project, the results of the analysis of the data collected by TASS International in Helmond was presented. The outcomes of the analysis have been used to understand the differences between conventional and automated vehicles in driving behaviour and update the microscopic simulation software PTV Vissim for simulating automated cars without the need of scripts. In order to study the whole span of driving behaviour possibilities, four driving logics have been developed within CoEXist: rail safe, cautious, normal and all-knowing. Fundamentals diagrams and maximum throughput of the traffic flow of these four driving logics for different road networks have been generated using the new validated capabilities of PTV Vissim developed during the project. These results have been used for creating assumptions for the supply side of the macroscopic travel demand model, enabling University of Stuttgart to develop tools for macroscopic modelling of automated cars.
Suzanne Hoadley from Polis took part in a special session on the role of public authorities in the development of automated vehicles. Given the public authority focus of the session, the presentation drew on the CoEXist AV-ready framework that was released earlier this year. The framework has identified several phases for an (urban) road authority to become AV-ready, starting with the most fundamental stage of becoming AV aware, followed by AV planning and implementation of measures related to AVs. Different mobility aspects are considered in this transition process, including policy, infrastructure and capacity building, among others. Measures corresponding to the different mobility aspects and the different phases are proposed. Suzanne went into detail on a couple of the measures in the planning phase: digital and physical infrastructure and traffic management. For this latter measure, the approach and findings of the sister H2020 project MAVEN was shared.
The congress week ended with a series of CoEXist partner meetings, including a meeting about AV infrastructure, a plenary meeting and finally a meeting on EU-US twinning, in which several representatives from the US, including the US DoT (Department of Transport), took part.
