Phase 3 kick-off
[Publication Date: February 2020]
The BrennerLEC project continues to grow. Now in its third phase of implementation, the dynamic speed management program developed by Autostrada del Brennero to reduce polluting emissions while reducing travel times is now mature for automation: it will always be the operators of the Traffic Management Centre to activate, or not, dynamic speed limits, but both those designed to reduce polluting emissions and those prepared to increase the capacity of the artery are now “suggested” by complex automated calculation models.
More in detail, starting from the end of 2019, experimentation with dynamic speed management in the case of heavy traffic - until now limited to the Trento centre-south section - has been extended to Bolzano Nord (91 km), again on the south carriageway. The first tests were carried out during the days of tourist exodus between December and the beginning of January. Based on the recorded live traffic volumes and forecast models, the system indicates when and how much to limit the speed in order to smoothen traffic flows and avoid the annoying and dangerous stop and go. The final decision remains in charge of the operators.
Similarly, by the end of the project scheduled for April 2021, the second experiment, the one limited to the stretch between Egna Ora and San Michele-Mezzocorona (in both directions) and aimed at reducing air pollution, will also work. In the first two phases, the main objective was to measure the relationship between dynamic speed limits and emission reduction. The data collected in this way allowed the introduction of a semi-automatic system: thanks to the complex diagnostic and forecasting system developed by the project’s techno-scientific partners, interweaving in real time weather data, air quality data and traffic volumes, the dedicated computing chain is able to propose the choice that, also in this case, will remain in the hand of the operators to implement.
For more information about the results of the previous test phases, please visit the following pages.