One of the challenges facing highway operators today is how to manage long-distance passenger and goods traffic more efficiently. They need to keep traffic flowing smoothly, avoid accidents and congestion, and help reduce fuel consumption and emissions. Just how much can be done today to overcome this challenge and balance mobility, safety and environmental needs is exemplified by numerous instances in which operators have successfully deployed our industry-leading traffic management technology and solutions. The latter include smart traffic management systems that can monitor factors like traffic speed and density and, when traffic volumes increase, impose speed limits and open up hard shoulders to help maintain the flow.

In cities, too, the ability to respond precisely and flexibly to changing traffic levels can reduce the impact on people and the environment. With roughly one-third of the world’s population expected to be living in cities by 2030, investing in smart traffic management solutions makes sense. In a survey conducted with Siemens’ support, 25 of the world’s largest megacities stated that traffic was by far their most pressing infrastructure problem. The average speed on roads in Mexico City, for instance, has dropped to 11 kilometers per hour – around the same as in 1910, when horse-drawn carriages were still on the roads. Cutting down the amount of stop-and-go involved in urban driving could bring down fuel consumption by as much as 20 percent and cut nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide emissions by up to 50 and 33 percent respectively. Managing urban traffic sustainably therefore means aiming to enable drivers to ride a wave of green lights. This is posing a sizeable mathematical challenge for Siemens researchers, but in Warsaw, Vilnius, Copenhagen and Münster, adaptive traffic signal control has been shown to successfully reduce traffic’s environmental impact by several hundred tons of CO₂ a year.