Local Authority: Traffic Management Planning
Road closures and transport network disruptions frequently result in road users having to follow a diversion and additional pressure being placed on existing junctions, as well as potentially significant disruption to local stakeholders. The lmmense simulation platform enables its users to quantify the impacts caused by disruption scenarios and to test the mitigation measures that could relieve them, providing the evidence-base for more informed intervention planning. As a trial application of the lmmense technology, and how it can support the development of Impact Assessment reports,
Buckinghamshire Council has used the Immense Platform to analyse two use cases, dealing with road closures and traffic management systems application.
At a glance
- Develop effective traffic management plans
- Improve customer engagement
- Faster, better planning
- Quickly and easily assess the impact of multiple interventions and alternative Traffic Management (TM) options
- Visualise a 24hr “day in the life of” the network under different TM scenarios.
- Agent-based traffic simulation to quantify impacts, including carbon emissions and preferred diversion routes, associated with alternative interventions and TM scenarios
The background
Buckinghamshire Council is the local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Buckinghamshire in England. It is a unitary authority, performing both county and district-level functions. The Network Management Unit within the Council is under pressure to maintain a well-run, incident free network during the delivery of road schemes and utility works. Within their county they are currently managing SG fibre installation, water works, and planned road closures, all in a network that doesn’t boast many strategic roads. It is therefore imperative for the Council to be able to make informed short-term decisions, that can be made quickly and based on evidence.
Immense responds to such a need with its lnfraOps platform, which enables users to assess impacts of transport interventions easily and within just a few hours, providing the evidence needed for fast and accurate decision- making.
The mission
Temporary interventions to the road network can cause
unforeseen transport impacts that even a deep knowledge of
the area cannot always predict. Transport modelling tools can
be costly and time consuming and the answers are not always
suitable for the questions sought.
Buckinghamshire Council tasked Immense with solving this
challenge and providing:
- Automatic generation of Impact Assessment reports that quantify the impacts caused by disruption scenarios the ability to test the mitigation measures that could
- relieve such impacts in order to provide the evidence- base for more informed interventions planning
- facilitating engagement with users and utility services involved in the process
- a simple front end for skilled and non-skilled users
The solution
Immense lnfraOps simulation platform enables users to quickly and easily assess the impacts of multiple interventions and alternative Traffic Management (TM) options, analysing a full 24hr “day in the life of” the network under different TM scenarios. Thanks to the agent-based nature of the simulation, users can quantify the impacts, including carbon emissions and preferred diversion routes, associated with alternative interventions and TM scenarios and TM scenarios and identify affected infrastructure and communities.
Develop effective traffic management plans
The traffic simulation techniques developed by Immense allow for a realistic representation of the network state, enabling quantitative comparison of impacts of alternative intervention scenarios and identifying potential mitigation options.
Improve customer engagement
The automated generation of output in a friendly format, tailored to expert and non-expert users, facilitates the engagement with users and utility services involved in the process.
Quicker, better planning
By pulling together a wide range of information, the Immense platform provides a holistic picture of various impacts on the transport network, providing the evidence base for enabling better prediction and planning. The underpinning AWS cloud infrastructure enables quick analysis and comparison of transport options, as scenario runs take hours rather than days/weeks to complete.
The results
Within hours, users were able to quantify the effects of the proposed interventions and the associated mitigation measures, providing the evidence-base for the stakeholder engagement process for the delivery of schemes.
The use of the Immense lnfraOps platform considerably reduced the time the Network Management team was able to make a swift decision about the type of TM plan to implement.
This was done within hours compared to the weeks that it takes with conventional methods.
The future
Improved forecasting can provide better tools with which to manage and mitigate the effects of necessary street works by informing traffic management and traveller information systems. Immense has developed user friendly traffic simulation tools that enable users to easily and quickly quantify the impacts of roadworks and interventions on the transport network.
Thanks to various layers of information and novel simulation techniques, forecasting the impacts of planned roadworks and unplanned interventions becomes easy. The friendly user interface and automated output reports that communicate impacts through a few simple figures, allow for an enhanced engagement with stakeholders and impacted users, resulting in an increased confidence in decision making around street works planning.
Removing the complexity and delay associated with traditional traffic modelling to enable quick and informed decision making as part of the Council’s Streetworks function. Road works are part of our day to day lives, whether providing essential utility services to residents and businesses or improving the condition of the roads. Immense allows us to better understand the impacts and opportunities to mitigate the effects of major works on our network, particularly within our larger towns”.
Christine Urry, Head of Network Strategy and Management, Communities Directorate, Buckinghamshire Council