Information on travel conditions undoubtedly is the aspect of road network operation that received the most media coverage up till now. Nevertheless, among the various commercial or public initiatives undertaken at the beginning of the nineties, only few were crowned with success and the market did not really respond. There are several reasons for this, among which poor information quality and geographically restricted data collection. In this context, several recent European initiatives allowed a very striking dynamisation of the sector. So we may point out the European Commission Recommendation of 4 July 2001 on the development of a legal and business framework for participation of the private sector in deploying telematics-based Traffic and Travel Information services in Europe. The setting up of Euroregional projects is another important factor in the implementation of this policy. As a result, several concrete initiatives were developed both to improve information quality (collection and dissemination) and to integrate this information beyond the managers' sphere of competence. In this sense, the present trends in this field fully contribute to the deployment of new operating policies with a special focus on the services to the user. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
Samenvatting