Due to increasing traffic levels, congestion and the subsequent follow-on effects, such as noise and air pollution, the city of Salzburg has been encouraged to launch initiatives to decrease pollution of the environment. The SENS project has used traffic signal control to set up dynamic dosing around the city centre with the goal of gently restricting the amount of car traffic entering the city.
This means that congestion is moved from the central area of the city to the outskirts. The capacity thus freed up in the inner city area is used by the traffic planning department of the city’s
municipal authorities to optimize the traffic flow for the environmentally-friendly modes of transport (public transportation). The focus of these measures is, therefore, an efficient use of the existing potential.
The SENS project has been put into practice with our VTmanager solution. The existing OCIT outstation 2.0 traffic computer was enhanced by the strategy management module (VTmanager.strategy), traffic situation (DRIVERS) and network control (PTV BALANCE) to develop a sophisticated and innovative traffic management system.
With the purchase in Autumn 2016, the responsible authorities in the city of Salzburg have 9 dynamic dosing cross-sections at their disposal, which can be actively used at the busiest times.
Excerpt from the final report of the SENS project of the city of Salzburg:
“As a result of the dosing, a shifting of congestion is clearly discernable, resulting in a positive effect on the journey times of the public transportation system. On the routes chosen for the evaluation, journey times could be improved, on average, by about 3 minutes.”
On both a political and a technical level, the city of Salzburg is so satisfied with the results of the SENS project that expansion to a further control area has been agreed upon and commissioned. This extension will be implemented by GEVAS software in the summer of 2017.
