Kallistratos Dionelis, General Secretary of ASECAP, makes the case for a lightly regulated, staged progression towards a pan-European cooperative infrastructure environment, the achievement of which should look to engender cooperation between the public and private sectors. Such an approach, he says, is the only real path to success.
Kallistratos Dionelis, General Secretary of ASECAP
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In the innocent minds of outsiders, therefore, it provides an environment which is much like the telecoms sector in that you can make a phone call from wherever you might be, get a service and be charged for it. But is that really so? In the reality of the telecoms world you can hope that your phone works perfectly; should something untoward occur you can simply contact your service provider, who will look to solve the problem as soon as is possible. However, this is not exactly the same in the road world. There, when you drive your car and experience a good level of service, you hope that your vehicle's onboard apparatus is deficient, allowing you to escape charging. And if such a 'miracle' should occur you keep the secret to yourself.
We are in the 21st century and the market is gaining a new kind of intelligence. Time is the most precious of commodities. People and customers hoard it as best they can and spend it carefully. This means that there is fierce competition among those looking to gain consumers' attention. In this modern economy the traditional barriers between supposedly separate business sectors are generally blown away. The intelligent transport market is a part of this new, greater whole. The mobile consumers are tempted to buy new cars, and to use modern nomadic devices and onboard units for road charging in order to fulfill their desires for a comfortable trip when using the roads, be it to travel to and from work or the supermarket, to visit friends and relatives or engage in some other pleasurable pursuit. Whatever their choices or intentions as consumers participating in this competitive intelligent transport market, they always know that the road connecting points A and B remains a fixed parameter which sits outside the competition to attract consumers' attention.
To analyse the complexities of transport and build a socially caring transport market the participation of both the public and private sectors is needed. The public sector will build the transparent rules and the regulatory mechanisms/environment and the private sector will manage properly and promote socio-economic efficiency and growth. Of course, public and private cultures use different terms and sometimes they may get lost in translation. Trust and honesty are words that do not differ from culture to culture, however.
There is a parameter to be considered when examining future transport scenarios. Road infrastructure tends to be egoistic in nature, in that as a general rule it comes into existence in a region in order to provide concrete local transport answers to concrete local transport questions. The design, financing, construction and operation of a transport infrastructure aims to balance the traffic demand and supply in a given environment. Under this approach, the local/regional transport planner focuses on regional requirements and supplies accordingly. Generally an efficient regional road infrastructure ignores, fully or partially, the priorities of adjacent regions and obviously considers general pan-European planning as a secondary priority.
Attempting, without some form of coordinated, general planning, to provide isolated, regional solutions to the increasingly pan-European demand for mobility will never lead to an optimised, intelligent use of the existing infrastructures. Briefly: a gathering of a variety of local/regional road infrastructures which work efficiently at the local/regional level does not per se constitute a unique, singular, intelligent infrastructure network. So what is the solution?
In the transport environment, managed freedom works perfectly while over-regulation is dangerous and inefficient. There are always rules to be set and respected as a basis for policy. The art of ambiguity is politically easy while defining measurable socio-economic principles and rules is hard. The hardest thing in the present transport reality is defining the concept of a matrix called 'intelligent transport'. The increasing pan-European mobility demands of both people and goods as well as the associated environmental and road safety challenges require a high-performance road transport matrix where infrastructure, vehicles and drivers are fully integrated into one reliable, efficient and smart transport system.
A properly functioning example of the above will finally lead to a sustainable transport system with better traffic management having as a result: congestion reduction; improved mobility; better road safety; increased security; and reduced environmental problems.
However, these objectives can only be realised by services produced by systems which are supported by an integrated approach based on the definition of an 'intelligent transport matrix'. This matrix is made of up three intelligent vectors: infrastructure, vehicles and drivers. These are full ingredients of a triangular cooperative system, enabled by synchronised, mature, advanced ITS information and communication technologies, leading to an efficient traffic management solution. It is to be noted that when establishing the triangular cooperative system, each of the three parts has previously fully embedded its own parameters of its own individual 'intelligence'. The 'intelligent infrastructure', that is, a road infrastructure including roadside infrastructure and a back office, is the key component in the cooperative system under examination. It safeguards the support, management and interaction between the physical environment of the road infrastructure network (as one unique entity) and the others (drivers/vehicles/nomadic devices, GPS and maps).
By doing so, the planner will be fully informed by the real stakeholders involved (public and private) about the various local needs, the regional solutions, the safety and environmental requirements. Thus, long-term decisions will be taken, building a cooperation framework that will ensure synchronisation, both geographically and between the various partners, taking account of the ITS technologies' maturity. An intelligent infrastructure network can only be created by such a prudent, step-by-step approach. This approach will safeguard as a first step the interactive cooperation between the different regional infrastructures (infrastructure to infrastructure/I2I). The second phase will follow by enabling the interactive cooperation of the 'intelligent infrastructure' with the intelligent vehicles and nomadic appliances (I2V/I2N) thus leading to the final step of a truly intelligent transport matrix offering a modern, safe and environmentally friendly/sustainable traffic management solution capable of serving the interests of the modern driver/user.
Kallistratos Dionelis, General Secretary of
In the innocent minds of outsiders, therefore, it provides an environment which is much like the telecoms sector in that you can make a phone call from wherever you might be, get a service and be charged for it. But is that really so? In the reality of the telecoms world you can hope that your phone works perfectly; should something untoward occur you can simply contact your service provider, who will look to solve the problem as soon as is possible. However, this is not exactly the same in the road world. There, when you drive your car and experience a good level of service, you hope that your vehicle's onboard apparatus is deficient, allowing you to escape charging. And if such a 'miracle' should occur you keep the secret to yourself.
Time - a precious commodity
In the present era mobility is the spirit of things, proving that Herakleitos was right when thousands of years ago he was insisting that "everything is in permanent flow".We are in the 21st century and the market is gaining a new kind of intelligence. Time is the most precious of commodities. People and customers hoard it as best they can and spend it carefully. This means that there is fierce competition among those looking to gain consumers' attention. In this modern economy the traditional barriers between supposedly separate business sectors are generally blown away. The intelligent transport market is a part of this new, greater whole. The mobile consumers are tempted to buy new cars, and to use modern nomadic devices and onboard units for road charging in order to fulfill their desires for a comfortable trip when using the roads, be it to travel to and from work or the supermarket, to visit friends and relatives or engage in some other pleasurable pursuit. Whatever their choices or intentions as consumers participating in this competitive intelligent transport market, they always know that the road connecting points A and B remains a fixed parameter which sits outside the competition to attract consumers' attention.
Achieving balance
The question in the permanent flow of traffic change is how to balance the risk of randomness with the security of symmetry. This science, or rather this art, is known to us as traffic management. To put it simply: it is trying to take "what happens if..." and then translate it into courses of action.To analyse the complexities of transport and build a socially caring transport market the participation of both the public and private sectors is needed. The public sector will build the transparent rules and the regulatory mechanisms/environment and the private sector will manage properly and promote socio-economic efficiency and growth. Of course, public and private cultures use different terms and sometimes they may get lost in translation. Trust and honesty are words that do not differ from culture to culture, however.
There is a parameter to be considered when examining future transport scenarios. Road infrastructure tends to be egoistic in nature, in that as a general rule it comes into existence in a region in order to provide concrete local transport answers to concrete local transport questions. The design, financing, construction and operation of a transport infrastructure aims to balance the traffic demand and supply in a given environment. Under this approach, the local/regional transport planner focuses on regional requirements and supplies accordingly. Generally an efficient regional road infrastructure ignores, fully or partially, the priorities of adjacent regions and obviously considers general pan-European planning as a secondary priority.
Attempting, without some form of coordinated, general planning, to provide isolated, regional solutions to the increasingly pan-European demand for mobility will never lead to an optimised, intelligent use of the existing infrastructures. Briefly: a gathering of a variety of local/regional road infrastructures which work efficiently at the local/regional level does not per se constitute a unique, singular, intelligent infrastructure network. So what is the solution?
In the transport environment, managed freedom works perfectly while over-regulation is dangerous and inefficient. There are always rules to be set and respected as a basis for policy. The art of ambiguity is politically easy while defining measurable socio-economic principles and rules is hard. The hardest thing in the present transport reality is defining the concept of a matrix called 'intelligent transport'. The increasing pan-European mobility demands of both people and goods as well as the associated environmental and road safety challenges require a high-performance road transport matrix where infrastructure, vehicles and drivers are fully integrated into one reliable, efficient and smart transport system.
Achieving efficiency
Such a system should be based on: efficient data gathering from the infrastructure sector; data exchange among the different infrastructures; building of an effective infrastructure information matrix; exchange of essential information between infrastructure and vehicle; exchange of information from vehicle to vehicle; and the supply of up-to-date traffic information to the driver.A properly functioning example of the above will finally lead to a sustainable transport system with better traffic management having as a result: congestion reduction; improved mobility; better road safety; increased security; and reduced environmental problems.
However, these objectives can only be realised by services produced by systems which are supported by an integrated approach based on the definition of an 'intelligent transport matrix'. This matrix is made of up three intelligent vectors: infrastructure, vehicles and drivers. These are full ingredients of a triangular cooperative system, enabled by synchronised, mature, advanced ITS information and communication technologies, leading to an efficient traffic management solution. It is to be noted that when establishing the triangular cooperative system, each of the three parts has previously fully embedded its own parameters of its own individual 'intelligence'. The 'intelligent infrastructure', that is, a road infrastructure including roadside infrastructure and a back office, is the key component in the cooperative system under examination. It safeguards the support, management and interaction between the physical environment of the road infrastructure network (as one unique entity) and the others (drivers/vehicles/nomadic devices, GPS and maps).
EU-wide action plan
Moving from the fragmented concept of a sum of 'efficient' road infrastructures in the different European countries towards a coordinated /common pan-European infrastructural approach is complex. It requires a concrete action plan for research and deployment of enabling ITS information and communication EU technologies. Substituting a fragmented approach with a coordinated European action will be a long-term process of designing, prioritising, financing, building and operating under a European Union (EU) planner. When addressing the ITS complexity, the EU planner should use an interactive, two-way approach - a bottom-up process of information gathering on regional infrastructure developments and a top-down decision model based on the EU's actual needs.By doing so, the planner will be fully informed by the real stakeholders involved (public and private) about the various local needs, the regional solutions, the safety and environmental requirements. Thus, long-term decisions will be taken, building a cooperation framework that will ensure synchronisation, both geographically and between the various partners, taking account of the ITS technologies' maturity. An intelligent infrastructure network can only be created by such a prudent, step-by-step approach. This approach will safeguard as a first step the interactive cooperation between the different regional infrastructures (infrastructure to infrastructure/I2I). The second phase will follow by enabling the interactive cooperation of the 'intelligent infrastructure' with the intelligent vehicles and nomadic appliances (I2V/I2N) thus leading to the final step of a truly intelligent transport matrix offering a modern, safe and environmentally friendly/sustainable traffic management solution capable of serving the interests of the modern driver/user.
