Innovation against congestion.

Congestion is one of the major problems that traffic engineers and planners are asked to deal with. In the past the most commonly proposed and adopted solution to congestion was the design and construction of new roads. New urban motorways and arterials shaped the way that our cities look and operate but failed to address the problem at the longer term since there was a parameter that was never thought off. Raging induced traffic soon clogged the new arterials or the added lanes on the urban motorways. Now, scientists even say that adding traffic lanes can even reduce overall performance.

And while this effect is not always recognised by politicians who seemed to prefer planning and designing for cars and not for people, the new political shift to cutting down state debt and deficit, meant that there were no longer huge amount of money for big transport infrastructure projects. But still the desire to deal with congestion remains as drivers lose time, waiting in stand still conditions while they are trying to get to and back from work every day. And since commuter traffic has two peaks within each day, going towards the city centre every morning and away from it towards the suburbs each afternoon, using the empty lanes and the surplus capacity on the opposite direction was a sensible thing that a few transport agencies tried to explore.

 

Source

Greek traffic police change the direction of a lane by placing “witches hats”. This is a measure that they use on rare occasions though; usually on long weekends and big public holidays like Easter and Christmas. This mass movement is called by the Greek media “the exodus” and “the return”.  Friday afternoon, highways that connect Athens and even Thessaloniki to the rest of Greece get an extra lane on the outbound directions and this is reversed on the day that everyone returns back home at the end of the long weekend. This is quite labour intensive and that’s why it’s not considered feasible for an everyday, commuter type solution.

There is a mechanical alternative to this treatment. It’s called “zipper” or barrier transfer machine as is the correct technical term. The zipper is a customised heavy vehicle used to transfer concrete lane dividers shifting a lane to be used for the opposite direction. Back in 2001, in the I-95 highway in Richmond, USA these machines were quite large and very slow moving. 

Source: Roads to the future

In 2013 zippers got a lot smaller and a lot quicker as shown in this video from I-15 in San Diego, USA.

The concrete barriers which can weigh almost half a tonne are linked together by metal connectors and are not anchored in the ground. This requirement creates a lot of constraints and limits its application in road sections that meet such conditions. Wide medians are excluded so are concrete barriers with lighting poles between them.  

Pacific Motorway, Tanah Merah, QLD

A simpler solution is having reversible lanes without any hard separation but rather than with just variable message signs like the one shifting the middle lane in Queens Road in Melbourne.

Queens Rd, Melbourne, Victoria

Innovative, clever solutions provide value for money but in order to achieve large scale benefits, a paradigm shift is necessary. Shifting away from car traffic and towards public transport and active travel and supporting this change with not only the funding but also the ingenuity that traffic engineers and planners have proven they possess.

World cup in Brazil. Stadiums instead of public transport.

I am a huge fan of football or soccer as it is called in the English speaking world. Unfortunately Brazil is a long way from Brisbane and as much as I would love to be able to watch Greece or Australia play at the world cup, unfortunately I had to watch the games on TV.

The Mundial as I've learned to know the world cup from my youth, as all huge sport competitions has also a transport and traffic side. As in the London Olympic games in 2012, the organizers have to plan an effective way to move tens of thousands of people to and from the venues safely. The big difference of the world cup from the Olympic games, is that the world cup is hosted across a whole country and there is only one game at a time while the Olympic games are hosted around a city (and a bit further out) with lots of different games and sports happening at the same time. The Olympic games are much bigger competition from a transport and traffic point of view but the transport task of the Mundial is quite significant as well.

Brazil promised FIFA and the Brazilian people a series of upgrades on it's infrastructure. And while FIFA, which is accused for corruption cared more about the new stadiums like the new Sao Paolo arena, the carrot for most Brazilians was the upgrades to transport infrastructure. A series of transport projects like upgrades to airports and new light rail systems were planned to be delivered supposedly just before the first whistle of the referee in the game of Brazil against Croatia.

In reality Brazil ended up spending a huge amount of money and failed to deliver a lot of the transport infrastructure upgrades that it promised. The light rail in Cuiaba where Australia played the first game against Chile, was meant to help soccer fans get around but was not ready in time. Instead, the new light rail line from the airport into the city runs for just 500 metres until it disappears completely.

source: The Associated Press

And there are a lot of other traffic and transport related issues that add to Brazilians' disappointment and frustration.

Traffic congestion and gridlocks around stadiums is a regular phenomenon and that caused a number of fans to miss the opening minutes of matches. Even the second best football player of all times, missed the first half of the opening game between Brazil and Croatia, held up in traffic.

Fans in Brazil, also experience big delays at airports, as the network capacity can not cope with all the demand and a lot of the airport upgrades were not delivered in time. And then there are those unlucky fans that were delayed in air traffic just because elected politicians want to demonstrate their country's superiority through sports.

All these traffic problems, along with massive hikes in public transport fares and extreme poverty led to protests, especially on the transport sector and clashes with the police.

Next time we take a break at the game's half-time, let us take a moment and ask a simple question like the kid on the photograph. If people don't even benefit from the infrastructure upgrades of such sport events, then what's really left?

AITPM@IPENZ - Last day. Ingenuity now more than ever.

Last day of the conference and I am happy to report on the conference proceedings back from Brisbane. I fully enjoyed my stay in Wellington but... give me Brisbane any day.

The conference day kicked of with keynote speaker Steven Newman, CEO of EROAD. I was hoping that Steven will speak about the work he did on road charging but Steven preferred to speak about future transport systems or as he called it super intelligent transport systems.

The second keynote speaker for the day was Rob Merrifield. Rob has worked for more than 50 years on road construction and management but his passion was always studying the historic development of transportation. From the Diolkos and the other ancient Greek rutways to the 1834 Newcastle upon Tyne railway and other tramway systems in England it seems that archeology takes more and more interest in transport systems of the past.

One of the morning streams was dedicated to the Railway Technical Society of Australasia a joint Technical Society of Engineers Australia and IPENZ New Zealand, formed to further the interests of the railway industry at large and its individual participants. With their upcoming conference CORE 2014 in Adelaide they are directed towards providing leadership for the facilitation and coordination of professionalism in the railway industry and the encouragement of member contributions to the application of railway technology and good management practices.

Michael McKeon from KiwiRai and then Randall Prestige from Target Railway Progress presented current and proposed New Zealand railway projects that will enable more efficient movement of freight and passengers across the country.

Overall the IPENZ Transportation Group 2014 conference was a great opportunity to learn about transport projects from the other side of Tasman sea. There are also  some good opportunities and ideas to enhance the collaboration between IPENZ and AITPM that are worth exploring the following days. I also found some good ideas that we can maybe adopt for our AITPM 2015 conference in Brisbane.

The quest for transport ingenuity is ongoing and more relevant now than ever in the history of 100 years of Engineers of New Zealand.

AITPM@IPENZ Day 1

A few days ago, I had the pleasure and the honour to win the AITPM New Zealand Study Tour Award. This award gives the opportunity to an AITPM member to have the conference registration costs, reasonable travel & accommodation expenses to attend the conference and accommodation costs for an additional two days in the conference city fully paid by AITPM.

Wellington is a lovely city, relaxed but yet vibrant, with a very friendly atmosphere.

It kind of made me homesick as it reminded me a bit of Kavala. Harbour town build amphiteatrically around the water.

Wellington though, has some amazing museums with astonishing Maori art and artifacts.

The highlight of the CBD tour was the cable car ride. Wellington's cable car is more than 110 years old.

Networking with my New Zealand (and a few Australian) colleagues was fun with activities like the geocaching/ treasure hunt at Zealandia and a bridge building competition that proved that traffic engineers and transport planners are not only good in planning and designing bridges but also at building them.

This first day was very promising. I hope the rest of the IPENZ Transportation Group conference is as interesting and as fun.