CROSS BORDER MANAGEMENT EVALUATION Corridor Aachen ‐ Brussels Final version March 2009 Cross border management evaluation Aachen ‐ Brussels Jasper Righolt [email protected] Rijkswaterstaat / TU Delft March 2009 2 Cross border management evaluation Aachen ‐ Brussels Index 0 SUMMARY 5 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE EVALUATION 7 1.1 THE INITIAL MOTIVATIONS FOR CROSS BORDER MANAGEMENT 7 1.2 PURPOSE OF THIS EVALUATION 8 1.3 GENERAL APPROACH 8 1.4 BUILD UP OF THE REPORT 8 2 DESCRIPTION OF THE CORRIDOR 9 2.1 INTRODUCTION 9 2.2 CROSS BORDER MANAGEMENT WITHIN CENTRICO 9 2.3 ROAD NETWORK DESCRIPTION 10 2.4 LOCATION AND DESCRIPTION OF VMS 11 2.5 TRAFFIC SITUATION 12 2.6 ACCIDENTS 15 2.7 ACTIVATION OF CBM 16 3 ORGANIZATIONAL PART OF CBM 19 3.1 INTRODUCTION 19 3.2 CBM PROTOCOL 19 3.2.1 CRITERIA TO START AND END CBM 19 3.2.2 CBM PROCEDURE 20 3.2.3 INVOLVED PARTIES 22 3.3 CBM IN PRACTICE 22 3.3.1 CBM PROCEDURE IN PRACTICE 22 3.3.2 COMMUNICATION 23 3.3.3 IMPROVEMENTS 24 3.4 ANALYSIS OF THE CBM‐LOGGINGS 24 3.4.1 INFORMATION ON VMSS 25 3.4.2 INFORMATION ABOUT CONGESTION 25 3.4.3 INFORMATION ABOUT ROAD DATA MEASUREMENT 25 4 TRAFFIC FLOW ANALYSIS 27 4.1 INTRODUCTION 27 4.2 APPROACH OF THE ANALYSIS 27 4.2.1 ANALYSIS ON ROUTE CHOICE BEHAVIOUR 27 3 Cross border management evaluation Aachen ‐ Brussels 4.2.2 ANALYSIS ON TRAVEL TIME 28 4.2.3 ANALYSIS ON PREVENTED VEHICLE LOSS HOURS 29 4.2.4 EVALUATED DATES 29 4.3 EFFECTS ON ROUTE CHOICE 29 4.3.1 AACHEN – BRUSSELS 30 4.3.2 BRUSSELS – AACHEN 31 4.4 EFFECTS ON TRAVEL TIME 32 4.4.1 AACHEN – BRUSSELS 32 4.4.2 BRUSSELS – AACHEN 33 4.5 EFFECTS ON PREVENTED VEHICLE LOSS HOURS 34 4.5.1 AACHEN – BRUSSELS 34 4.5.2 BRUSSELS – AACHEN 35 4.6 EFFECTS OF INCIDENTS 35 4.7 CONCLUSION 35 5 COSTS AND BENEFITS 37 6 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 39 6.1 ORGANIZATION 39 6.1.1 PROCEDURE 39 6.1.2 COMMUNICATION 39 6.1.3 CBM LOGGING 40 6.2 EFFECTS ON TRAFFIC FLOW 40 6.3 COSTS AND BENEFITS 41 6.4 OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS 41 7 APPENDICES 42 7.1 APPENDIX A – SPLITTING RATES 43 7.1.1 SPLITTING RATES AACHEN – BRUSSELS 43 7.1.2 SPLITTING RATES BRUSSELS – AACHEN 45 7.2 APPENDIX B – TRAVEL TIME 48 7.2.1 TRAVEL TIMES AACHEN – BRUSSELS 48 7.2.2 TRAVEL TIMES BRUSSELS – AACHEN 50 4 Cross border management evaluation Aachen ‐ Brussels 0 Summary Providing information to the road user is getting more and more important. Due to the ever‐ increasing number of vehicles, congestion is increasing as well. Since being longer on the road than necessary costs a lot of money, the information provided about the situation on the road is very important for the route choice. Within the European Commission several programs and organizations are launched and started to tackle these issues European wide and Cross Border Management (CBM) is one of the subjects. The goal of CBM is improving traffic flow on economically important corridors which crosses borders. CBM targets the long distance travellers, for which rerouting via an alternative route can be beneficial when there is an incident on their main route. Information about the incident will be shown on the Variable Message Signs (VMS). The ministries of transportation agreed on evaluating the CBM corridors, the goal of this evaluation is to define the status quo of the CBM corridor and investigate possible improvements. The evaluated corridor Aachen – Brussels consists of a southern (main) route from Aachen via Liège to Brussels and a northern (alternative) route from Aachen via The Netherlands and Lummen to Brussels. The VMSs are located just before Kreuz Aachen on the A4 and A44 and at junction Bertem near Brussels. The daily traffic volume for both routes is on average 62.600 and 57.900 vehicles per day for respectively the main and the alternative route. The overall maximum lies around Liège with a daily traffic volume of 110.600 vehicles per day. The percentage of freight traffic on the roads differs from 8 to 36% with a higher percentage on the main freight roads. These are from and to Aachen from the nearest big junctions for both the main and the alternative road. Accidents on the road are relatively low on the corridor, on the main route as a whole, 330 accidents per year happen, with the biggest part (250) on Walloon land. On the alternative route as a whole, 280 accidents per year happen. CBM is activated just a few times since 2005; 0 in 2005, 7 in 2006, 1 in 2007 and 1 in 2008. Compared to other corridors this is very low. A reason is that the main route has enough capacity to deal with an incident and it is not always necessary to activate CBM. Other reasons can be found in the organizational part of CBM. The criteria to start and end CBM differ a lot per traffic centre. Information from the traffic centres point out that the lack of fixed criteria could be a reason CBM is not activated that much. The communication within CBM is also a point where improvements can be made. Information from the traffic centres point out that there is a language barrier between the different traffic centres. Since not everybody speaks English in the Walloon traffic centre, sometimes CBM is not activated. According to the procedure, all the traffic centres have to accept the CBM activation before it is definitely activated. So if the communication lacks, the CBM will not be activated. It is a possibility to switch to other ways of communication, the use of web‐based system; using e‐mail and translation software are all possibilities that could be beneficial to CBM, but the options should be investigated. The effect of CBM on the traffic flow is hard to evaluate, because there are so few CBM activations. The analysis of the few CBM events show that CBM has an effect on the splitting rate, road users will reroute when the VMSs show there is an incident. Analysis on the travel time shows CBM has a positive effect. When there is an incident, the rerouted vehicles do have a shorter travel time because of CBM. The effect CBM has on the prevented vehicle loss hours is also a positive. Not only 5 Cross border management evaluation Aachen ‐ Brussels the rerouted vehicles with a shorter travel time, but also the road users which did not reroute. The rerouted vehicles are taken out of the queue, so there is more space for the other road users. In that way they also benefit from the rerouting of the other vehicles. Because of the lack of CBM‐events, it is not possible to evaluate the costs and benefits of CBM. Also because of the lack of road data, not all the CBM‐events could be evaluated. In that case it is not possible to do a valid costs‐benefit evaluation. In a future evaluation when there are more CBM‐ events and the road data is complete from all the partners, a costs‐benefit evaluation can be made. The most improvements can be made within the organizational part of CBM. The start and stop criteria should be made general and fixed. The communication can be improved by having a person who speaks English 24/7 at the traffic centre. Also the organization of workshops between the operators should be done more frequently. Other possibilities of communicating should be investigated and the use of translation software can be used to handle the language barrier. The logging of CBM should be done more effectively and should be more complete. The available data lacks from time to time and that is not cooperating with the lack of CBM‐events. CBM is principally a good way for rerouting long distance traffic and reduces travel time for all road users, both rerouted and not rerouted. The effects on the traffic flow show CBM is working and is beneficial to the regulations on the road. However the organization on the CBM corridor Aachen – Brussels is lacking. The important improvements that should be made are the improvements within the organization. After improving the organization CBM will work properly and a future evaluation can evaluate the effects on traffic in a better way and a costs‐benefit evaluation can be made. 6 Cross border management evaluation Aachen ‐ Brussels 1 Introduction to the evaluation 1.1 The initial motivations for Cross Border Management Due to the ever‐increasing number of vehicles on the roads, congestion is increasing and the impact of an incident on the road is increasing too. Accidents happen, cars will break down, that is a something you cannot prevent. Something you can do is to inform the road users about the incident and recommend them to reroute. To realise such prevention, measures have to be taken. Measures to inform the road users, so they can decide whether they want to follow the recommendations or not. These matters are tackled European wide. The DG TREN of the European Commission launched the TEMPO program in 2001. TEMPO is an acronym for Trans‐European intelligent transport systems PrOjects. Goal of this program is to get a better coordination between the partners on the Trans‐European Road Network. Within the program six Euro Regional Projects were started, one of them is CENTRICO. CENTRICO stands for Central European Transport Telematics Implementation Coordination.