$100m on IT to break traffic jams

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

Transit New Zealand plans to spend almost $100 million over the next five years on nationwide information systems designed to free up traffic flows.

The money has been allocated by Transfund, which is spending $17 billion on roading over the next 10 years.

About $60 million will be spent extending the system used on Auckland's roads round the country. A further $37.5 million will be used to design and build the infrastructure for charging road tolls - global positioning system (GPS) devices and central computers.

The move comes as Auckland, in particular, struggles to free motorways from traffic jams that cause commuter delays and cost the city millions of dollars in lost productivity.

Rod James, Transit's ITS manager, said there was a strong commitment to use information and communication technologies to make the country's roads move more smoothly.

ITS, or intelligent transport systems, is the use of technology to manage "surface transportation systems".

In Auckland, that means a motorway and road management system to keep people informed of traffic conditions by electronic signs on the motorway, website information and radio broadcasts.

The information for this system is managed at the Auckland traffic centre adjacent to the northern exit of the Harbour Bridge.

James said motorway monitoring, incident management, electronic tolls and road-user charging made up ITS. A complicated melding was required over the seven regions New Zealand had been divided into and the 130 organisations - such as councils, contractors, users and funding bodies - which had an input.

"The geography and population requirements of each area are quite different and dictate the system needs."

A database of road use, based on Oracle software, has just been built in Wellington and is central to the creation of a national ITS strategy.

Eventually, the database will be used to provide a series of websites with information on everything from traffic on the Auckland motorways to snow on the Desert Road.

James said there was also talk of systems that would allow people to have material sent to their cellphones.

The Auckland system was already helping traffic to flow more quickly because the monitoring team could detect accidents or breakdowns and inform the agencies charged with keeping traffic moving.

The motorway and arterial road cameras were particularly effective, said James, and more of them would be used nationwide.

The ITS strategy allows for charging vehicles entering congested areas at varying rates depending on their purpose and the time of day.

It also manages access to the motorways through on-ramp controls.

Large IT systems will sit behind ITS, especially if in-vehicle identifiers are used, as in London or Singapore, for toll and access charging.

James said Auckland had the advantage of fibre-optic cable laid alongside the motorway, but other communication technologies were being explored.

Brent Maguire, Transit New Zealand procurement manager, said a tender had been notified to find expert help to work on the tolling system project.

The intention was to create a combined system to bill people for using tolled roads. The first road using such a system would be opened in 2008 from Orewa to Puhoi.

Maguire said the agencies involved were Transit, the Transport Ministry, the Land Transport Safety Authority and the Motor Vehicle Registry.

Tolling would require a complex set of information systems because it was designed to work at motorway speed using the "Freeflow" software Transit preferred.

Freeflow could identify the vehicle using either a registration system or by reading the numberplate, then bill the customer or take money from a prepaid account.