An intelligent traffic system for vulnerable road users.

This work, funded by the EC under the DRIVE programme, is intended to help create a traffic system that meets the needs of vulnerable road users (namely pedestrians and cyclists) both in terms of travel and safety. The creation of a system that meets the needs of vulnerable road users (VRUs) will be achieved on two levels. (1) The project will develop a model of the traffic system that incorporates VRUs as an integral part. This model will build on existing models of the traffic system and will incorporate information on VRU route choice criteria. Outputs from the model will include predictions on both travel (flows) and safety (conflicts and accidents) and will provide planners and other users with the ability to create networks that meet VRU needs. (2) The project will evaluate a number of Road Transport Informatics (RTI) applications in signalling and junction control, in order to ascertain what benefits can be obtained by such local measures. The information obtained from vehicle and VRU detection devices will be used in an attempt to reduce VRU delay times and thus to increase their relative importance in the transportation system. In the latter stages of the project, the two levels will be linked by feeding back into a relevant sub-model the results of the localized experiments. These real-world demonstration studies will also serve to test the reliability of this sub-model as a prediction tool. Simulations will also be run to assess the effects on vehicular traffic of larger-scale interventions to favour VRUs. This paper presents a discussion of the overall project design, outlining the major elements of the work. It discusses progress in the first year of the three-year project. These include a comparison of problems for pedestrians and cyclists in the three countries involved (Britain, The Netherlands and Sweden), a review of previous work on pedestrian and cyclist route choice criteria, and early decisions on the focus of the modelling and experimental work. Implications of these for subsequent work on the project will be discussed. (A)