In Beijing, congestion and environmental issues are of particular concern, not only because of the effects of the traffic itself but also in view of the "Green Olympics" initiative launched by the Government, that is promoting an environmental friendly Olympics in 2008. In this scenario an innovative project, called ITS-TAP (Intelligent Transport Systems for Traffic Air Pollution), has been launched in 2004 under the Sino-Italian Cooperation Programme promoted by the Italian Ministry of Environment and Territory, SEPA, the State Environment Protection Agency of China, and the Beijing Municipality. The approach aims to help reducing the traffic impacts on air pollution through a dynamic strategy activated on condition: based on real time traffic and environment data collected in the field, a predictor model indicates when air pollution will exceed established thresholds: accordingly, private cars will be prevented from entering the city central area for a proper period of time necessary to recover the situation. The restriction will not be generalised, but limited to the most polluting cars, the so-called yellow tag cars. At the same time, the concept provides for an optimization of bus public transport service, using new generation planning and AVL (Automatic Vehicle Localization) technology. The paper reports on this project, discussing the system configuration that includes a network of fixed and mobile air quality measurement systems; a traffic classification and counting system for the 22 lanes entering the second ring road; a bus service planning and AVL system for an experimental fleet of 200 buses; a data centre and a Decision Support System. The ITS-TAP system will be used by BEPB, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, and BPT, the Beijing Public Transport Holdings. Training and organization issues will also be addressed by the paper. For the covering abstract see ITRD E134653.
Samenvatting