IVHS applications in Australia

This paper briefly describes some IVHS initiatives in Australia and assesses the prospects for further developments. Two major activities in the IVHS area are reviewed: • a technology agreement between the state road authority (VicRoads) and the national telecommunications (Telecom) provider to develop vehicle location monitoring technologies for road management in Melbourne called TRansport Information and Management System (TRIMS); and • the application of a low cost technology, which is complementary to ATC systems, to capture data about the performance of public buses on arterial roads in Sydney. The technology is called the Arterial Network Travel Time System (ANTTS). These projects promise to deliver cost effective systems for the capture and management of road use data which can help to improve the operation of traffic control systems, introduce selective vehicle priority strategies such as signal preemption for buses, provide passenger information displays and collect information for planning purposes.