By Guest contributor |
While congestion in cities can manifest in different ways – whether that’s gridlock at rush hour, bottlenecks resulting from accidents or construction work, or inefficiencies caused by outdated traffic management systems – its disruptive impact remains constant.
Yet urban areas continue to grow. Already, just over half (55 per cent) of the world’s population lives in urban areas, according to a new report from the United Nations, and that’s expected to increase to 68 per cent by 2050. For city planners, this presents a significant challenge when it comes to managing congestion and optimising traffic flow. Strategies informed by traditional road sensors are no longer sufficient. Effective traffic management requires real-time traffic data to ensure a fast and accurate response.
But data without context means nothing. At TomTom, we bring data to life through maps, transforming billions of data points that come from monitoring almost 100 million kilometres of roads around the world into actionable intelligence.
For more than 25 years, my work has focused on harnessing real-time traffic data and high-precision mapping to transform how cities move. My team and I develop tools that enable businesses and governments to not only understand traffic, congestion and travel times, but use this wealth of data to address deep complexities around mobility and create better, more liveable cities. For example, we can help a city wanting to reduce accidents to correlate historic speeds to accident data by plotting this on a map to highlight areas of concern. Or we can help a road agency managing traffic to pinpoint exactly where congestion is happening in real time to implement policy, deploy operational staff or adapt signal timings.
Our suite of traffic analytics products includes TomTom Traffic Stats, a road network analysis tool that enables city planners to understand why a particular road got congested or how a new road layout impacted travel times. TomTom Route Monitoring, meanwhile, enables city planners to dynamically track traffic flow and travel speeds in real time, providing the insights they need to update variable message sign displays so that road users can understand the conditions ahead. Then there’s TomTom Junction Analytics, an easy-to-use API and companion web app to optimise traffic flow at intersections. By ensuring traffic lights are timed right, city planners can not only enhance safety and reduce delays, but help their city meet sustainability goals.
By leveraging our maps and extensive traffic data, cities are effectively tackling congestion. For example, in preparation for the 2024 Paris Olympics, it was our data that helped the city’s highway authority to plan and manage its road networks effectively, ensuring that traffic could continue to flow during the event. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, authorities leverage TomTom’s real-time floating car data to track congestion patterns, evaluate junction performance and pinpoint traffic bottlenecks in real time. This has enabled the city to reduce delays, optimise land use and make infrastructure investments based on real-world movement data. Authorities in Dubai, meanwhile, use our data to monitor congestion hotspots, inform traffic management policies and provide real-time information to drivers.
As cities continue to become smarter and more connected, the role of data is only becoming more important. The growing number of internet of things devices and connected infrastructure requires tools capable of integrating and analysing vast amounts of data from diverse sources. The rising need to reduce emissions and improve sustainability demands route optimisation and greener mobility solutions. As we move towards new models of mobility, like shared transport solutions and autonomous systems, access to fresh, centimetre-level accuracy data is paramount to ensure safety and efficiency.
At TomTom, we are committed to delivering this data. We’re doing it with the help of partners like Microsoft, which, through its Azure cloud platform, enables enterprises and developers to incorporate TomTom’s rich mapping and location capabilities into solutions, ranging from spatial analytics to IoT and asset-tracking. TomTom and Microsoft also collaborate on product innovation, using Microsoft’s AI prowess and TomTom’s extensive location technology experience to develop AI-powered solutions for the automotive, logistics and broader mobility domains. It opens endless possibilities for cities to manage traffic and mobility efficiently and – more importantly – for us as citizens to navigate our world effortlessly.
Ralf-Peter Schäfer is vice president of product management for traffic and travel information at TomTom
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