Evaluation of Renewal of Road Weather Information System and Finnish Road ITS Action Plan

EasyWay

Evaluation Expert Group (EEG) Document

Issue: 1st edition

Version: 0.9 Date: 28th July 2011 Peer review:

Distribution level: Public Status: Draft

PREFACE

This evaluation report is covering the evaluation of the Finnish Road ITS Action Plan and in more detail one of the projects in it, the renewal of road weather information systems and services.

The Finnish Road ITS Plan was agreed upon in 2009, and its evaluation (including the evaluation of the projects within it) was carried out by VTT as an independent evaluation project in 2010. The 1 evaluation is reported in Kulmala & Schirokoff 2010 , and this report is based on translation of this report.

The projects in the Action Plan are being implemented in the years 2010-2015. The renewal of the road weather information system and services is primarily being carried out within EasyWay Phase 2, i.e. 2011-2012.

1 Risto Kulmala, Anna Schirokoff: Tieliikenteen hallinta 2015 (Road traffic management 2015). Helsinki 2010. Finnish Road Administration. Reports 42/2009. 88 p. + app. 8 p. ISBN 978-952-221-293-1, ISSN 1459-1553, TIEH 3201156-v.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

REPORT TEMPLATE 5

Project Reference: CS412 Finland 5

Project Name: Renewal of Road Weather Information System 5

EasyWay Euro Region: VIKING 5

1. Key Evaluation Results 6

1.1. Impact on Traffic Flow 6

1.2. Impact on Safety 6

1.3. Impact on Environment 6

1.4. Other Key Results 6

2. Description of the Problem 7

2.1. Site 7

2.2. Issues Addressed 7

3. Description of the ITS Project 9

3.1. Service Area 9

3.2. Key Words 9

3.3. Objectives 9

3.4. Systems and Technologies Applied 9

3.5. Costs 13

3.6. Status of the Project 14

4. Evaluation Planned 15

4.1. Timing and Type of Evaluation 15

4.2. Objectives for the Evaluation 15

4.3. Research Questions 15

4.4. Study Area for the Evaluation 15

4.5. Expected Impacts 15

4.6. Expected Methods 15

5. The Impact of the Project - Results 17

5.1. Technical Performance 17

5.2. Results 17

5.3. Reliability of Results 18

5.4. Research Questions Answered 18

5.5. Overall Assessment 18

5.5.1. SAFETY 18

5.5.2. EFFICIENCY 19

5.5.3. ENVIRONMENT 19

6. European Dimension: Transferability of the Results 20

Annex 1: Technical Annex 20

Selected Indicators 20

Breakdown of Project Costs 20

Data Collection Methods 20

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REPORT TEMPLATE

Project Reference (From EasyWay Work plan): CS412 Finland

Project Name: Renewal of Road Weather Information System

EasyWay Euro Region: VIKING

Author of the report: Risto Kulmala, VTT, Finland

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1. Key Evaluation Results

This section should present a brief summary of the key results related to the EasyWay objectives and any other key results.

1.1. Impact on Traffic Flow

The renewal and improvement of road weather information is estimated to have only negligible effects on congestion costs. However, it will make travellers and hauliers better informed and thereby enhance their travels and transports considerably. The measure also enhances the effectiveness of winter maintenance, which will improve the accessibility and efficiency of road transport especially in adverse road weather conditions.

The Road ITS Action Plan is assessed to make a substantial contribution to efficiency by reducing congestion costs by 20% on the main road network. Largest parts of these effects result from projects in the incident management and ICT infrastructure domains.

1.2. Impact on Safety

The renewal of the road weather information systems and the enhancement of related information services will reduce injury accidents annually by ca 13, which means a reduction in the number of fatalities and injuries on the Finnish main road network by ca. 1%. The reduction of fatalities and injuries in adverse road weather conditions due to the measure is estimated as ca. 4%.

The whole Finnish Road ITS Action Plan is estimated to reduce injury accidents annually in the 2010 situation by more than 220. This means a reduction of ca 7% in the number of fatalities and injuries on the road network operated by the Finnish Transport Agency. The biggest gains in safety are resulting from the traffic management and control, enforcement and ICT infrastructure projects.

1.3. Impact on Environment

The renewal and improvement of road weather information is estimated to have only negligible impacts on CO2 emissions.

The Finnish Road ITS Action Plan is estimated to reduced the national road traffic related CO2 emissions by ca. 4%. The biggest impacts result from ICT infrastructure and traffic information projects.

1.4. Other Key Results

The evaluation also compared the benefits in terms of saved accident, congestion and CO2 costs to the project costs. For both renewal of the RWIS information and the total Finnish Road ITS Action

Plan, the annual safety, congestions and CO2 benefits for two years were higher than the project costs for the six-year period. Hence, the renewal of road weather information as well as the whole Road ITS Action Plan are economically very profitable .

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2. Description of the Problem

2.1. Site

The road ITS Action Plan as well as the renewal of the road weather information system and related services cover the whole of Finland, i.e. the Finnish EasyWay network as well as the other parts of the road transport system. The project and the Action Plan focus on the EasyWay network, however.

The network was divided into the following parts in order to identify the user requirements and transport-related problems: 1. Major metropolitan areas 2. Other metropolitan and urban areas 3. Key main road connections 4. Other main road sections 5. Basic network in rural areas 6. Special sites

In total, 53 400 million vehicle kilometres are being travelled on the Finnish road network, and of these ca. 25 000 million on main roads and major roads (1, 3 and 4).

The Finnish Road ITS Plan was agreed upon in 2009, and its evaluation (including the evaluation of the projects within it) was carried out by VTT as an independent evaluation project in 2010. All is 2 reported in Kulmala & Schirokoff 2010 , and this report is based on translation of this report.

2.2. Issues Addressed

The main user needs and requirements were identified to be the following:

Main roads, metropolitan and urban areas and special sites • the performance and safety of travel and transport chains between regions and inside urban areas: providers of goods transport and passenger traffic services, foreign trade, commuter traffic Basic network in rural areas • the basic safety and transport needs of the forest industry’s timber acquisition Basic network in rural areas and urban areas • the basic transport and safety needs of school children

Main transport problems identified for each operating environment, and thereby the effects shown in Table 1 were to be sought by the ITS Action Plan for the different parts of the road transport system.

2 Risto Kulmala, Anna Schirokoff: Tieliikenteen hallinta 2015 (Road traffic management 2015). Helsinki 2010. Finnish Road Administration. Reports 42/2009. 88 p. + app. 8 p. ISBN 978-952-221-293-1, ISSN 1459-1553, TIEH 3201156-v.

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Table 1. Effects sought for by the Finnish Road ITS Action.

In addition, the following effects were sought for in all parts of the road transport system:

 Road users get on all sections of the road network o information about the allowed speed o guidance to different locations o warnings of local problems  Curbing climate change  Constraining traffic demand  Minimising traffic congestion caused by traffic accidents and disruptions

On the basis of the user requirements, problems identified and the effects sought for, the Finnish Road Administration developed the Road ITS Action Plan, with the help of its regional offices.

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3. Description of the ITS Project

3.1. Service Area

The actual project is directly linked to the EasyWay Service areas of ICT infrastructure, but it is indirectly linked also to Traveller Information Services, Traffic Management Services, and Freight and Logistics Services by providing the prerequisites for these services. The road ITS Action Plan also assessed at the same time contained all service areas, although the Freight and Logistics Services only indirectly.

3.2. Key Words

ICT infrastructure, data management and exchange, traveller information services, traffic management services

3.3. Objectives

In line with the EasyWay objectives, the project and the Finnish road ITS Action Plan aimed towards  Improved road safety in terms of less fatalities and injuries  Decreased congestion and congestion costs

 Reduction in CO2 emissions

3.4. Systems and Technologies Applied

The renewal of road weather information systems consists of collection and storing of information including user interface and reporting, new road section weather service, improved road weather monitoring (new and upgraded stations, cameras, mobile monitoring) as well as the renewal of the quality information system

All actitivies in the action plan are reported below, and the sub-projects related to the renewal of raod weather information systems and the related services are marked in bold under ICT infrastructures:

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ICT infrastructures Further development of Digiroad Lappeenranta traffic centre deployment Upgrading of Turku traffic centre Service quality control and improvement of quality Coding of detours into road register with feature data Improvement of journey time information Extension of journey time information Improvement of journey time information (NOBS) Renewal and improvement of road weather information Road section weather service New and upgraded RWIS stations at EtP region New and upgraded RWIS stations at Var region New and upgraded road weather cameras Purchasing road weather data collection and storage service New optical sensors Friction data from mobile sensors Centralised upgrading of road side monitoring devices (ca 1000) Improvement of incident information Enhancement of traffic centre data management systems Integrated user interface Helsinki region cooperation plan (centres) Real-time transport system status for traffic centres of all modes Upgrade of operator control systems national upgrade of operator control systems Tools for active operation of road network Regional traffic management plan (KaS) National development of rerouting Regional traffic and incident management plans (PoP) Regional traffic management action plan (Pir) Regional traffic and incident management plans (Uud) Regional traffic management plan (PoS) Rerouting plans and incident management trailers Wireless broadband communcation in urban areas Communications in Helsinki area System architectures and standards Maintenance of national system architecture International cooperation (EU, Nordic countries) EU follow-up, participation in standardisation Improved expertise Large-scale pilots and test sites Test sites for FOTs etc.

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Traffic information Enhancement of Digitraffic and ALK web services Development of ALK service basedon user requirements Extension of Digitraffic service National multimodal route data base Open public transport information collection database Archipelago traffic www portal National PT timetable and route database Multimodal travel planning in urban areas Multimodal services in Helsinki area (intelligent route planner) Innovative multimodal services (competition) Public transport information at stops Oulu region PT information extension Pirkanmaa regiuon PT information enhancement Electronic information systems in municipalities Public transport information at P+R sites Fixed guidance (Helsinki region) Helsinki-Espoo metro P+R real-time information system Ring rail P+R real-time information system Fixed guidance (Joensuu) Fixed guidance (Kuopio) Enhanced impacts of information services Campaign and information action plan Explanatory information Incident management Electronic rerouting information system Improved authority cooperation, quicker information Incident management operation model for authorities Improvement of authority cooperation Enhanced incident clearance Road assistance - removal of stationary vehicles from road Incident management vehicles, radio frequency allocation Mid-reserve gates on highway 4 Kempele-Kello (Oulu) Enforcement Increased speed enforcement Speed enforcement deployment on main road network Increased junction enforcement Enforcement on speeding and driving against red (KaS) Enforcement on speeding and driving against red (PoP) Enforcement on speeding and driving against red (EtP) Enforcement on speeding and driving against red (PoS)

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Traffic management and control Renewal of traffic control systems Border station traffic management Traffic management deployment at border stations Traffic management at special locations Priority systems for ferry transport variable speed limits at spots Variable speed limits at highway 5 Petäisenniska Variable speed limits at junctions Variable speed limits at highway 8/23 junction Variable speed limits at highway 5 Nerkoo Dynamic traffic management of new roads and tunnels Ring I tunnel Dynamic traffic control on highway 3 Hämeenlinna and Ring II tunnels Dynamic traffic control in Helsinki region Dynamic traffic control on main roads (Helsinki region) Dynamic traffic control highway 7 Ring III - Porvoo Dynamic traffic control on problematic one-carriaway road sections Information on highway 180 ("Archipelago road") Information signs on highway26 Hamina-Taavetti Dynamic traffic control on highway 6 Kouvola Dynamic traffic control on highway 6 Taavetti-Lappeenranta Dynamic traffic control on highway 5 Kotka-Kouvola (HGV) Renewal of Raippaluoto bridge control system Dynamic traffic control on highway 19 Nurmo-Lapua Dynamic traffic control on highway 3 Vaasa (south) Dynamic traffic control on highway 8 Vaasa (north) Dynamic traffic control on problematic broad one-carriageway sections Dynamic traffic control on highway 6 Koskenkylä-Kouvola Enhanced signal control in city areas Upgrading signal control in Oulu area Upgrading signal control in Tampere (events, priorities) Upgrading and extending signal control in Helsinki area Public transport priorities in city areas Ramp metering Enhanced signal control in smaller city areas Enhanced signal control and upgrading of signals Renewal and extension of signal control devices (Uud) Renewal of signal control devices (Var) Renewal of signal control devices (PoS)

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Dynamic traffic control in city areas outside Helsinki Dynamic information on Turku arterials Plan for traffic management and queue warning system in Jyväskylä Dynamic traffic control on highway 4 Haaransilta-Räinänperä Extension of dynamic traffic control on highway 4 Lintula-Isko Dynamic traffic control on highway 20 Oulu-Kiiminki Dynamic traffic control on highway 22 Oulu-Muhos Extension of dynamic information in Tampere area Dynamic traffic control on highway 3 Tampere-Lempäälä/Tampere rings Dynamic traffic control on highway 8 Turku-Nousiainen Dynamic traffic control on highway E18/40 Kausela-Raisio Dynamic traffic control on highway 5 Matkus-Päivärinta Dynamic traffic control on highway 5 Vuorela-Siilinjärvi Demand management Preparation for road use charging

3.5. Costs

The costs for the actual sub-projects in the action are the following for the period 2010-2015:

Invest- ment Invest- Oper.& road ment Purcha- maint. oper. others sing M€ M€ / Extent M€ M€ / year year Renewal and improvement of road weather information Road section weather service 8600 km 0,3 New and upgraded RWIS stations at EtP region 1500 km 0,71 New and upgraded RWIS stations at Var region 0,5 New and upgraded road weather cameras 0,2 Purchasing road weather data collection and storage service 0,5 0,5 New optical sensors 2 0,2 Friction data from mobile sensors 0 0,2 Centralised upgrading of road side monitoring devices (ca 1000) 2 Concerning the whole road ITS action plan, the costs are the following classified according to the main headings:

Costs 2010-2015 in M€ Operation & Action in the road ITS Action Plan Purch- Investment maint- asing enance ICT infrastructures 33,7 4,7 3,6 Traffic information 14,2 6,5 1,9 Incident management 0,6 0 0,1 Enforcement 2,8 0 0,8 Traffic management and control 114,3 0,2 29,3 Total 165,6 11,4 35,7

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3.6. Status of the Project

The actual project is under deployment. Some of the parts have already been deployed in 2010, some will be deployed within EasyWay 2 i.e. 2011-2012, whereas some will be deployed after EasyWay2, i.e. in 2013-2015.

The project and the whole road ITS action plan was assessed as an ex-ante assessment in 2010.

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4. Evaluation Planned

4.1. Timing and Type of Evaluation

The only planned evaluation is ex-ante evaluation in this stage. Some subservices like the road section weather service is likely to be assessed separately also as an ex-post evaluation.

4.2. Objectives for the Evaluation

The main targets were to assess the project’s and action plan’s impacts on safety, congestion and CO2, compare the impacts to the costs, and based on the assessment to prioritize the services to be deployed.

4.3. Research Questions

The main research questions were:  What are the likely effects of the service and the action plan on safety?  What are the likely effects of the service and the action plan on congestion?

 What are the likely effects of the service and the action plan on CO2 emissions?  How efficient are the different actions when their costs are compared to the benefits due to reduced crashes, congestion and emissions valuated in money? All of the research questions were considered and answered.

4.4. Study Area for the Evaluation

Describe the study area and show how the area covered by data collection relates to the ITS site described in Section 2.1 (e.g. does the evaluation cover wider impacts on the network or is it confined to the immediate site of the ITS scheme).

4.5. Expected Impacts

The main impacts studied are those on safety, congestion and CO2 emission, in alignment with the EasyWay objectives.

4.6. Expected Methods

Describe the methods to be used to inform each of the objectives for the evaluation (identified above) under the following headings.

Indicators

Concerning safety, the main indicator is the (expected) number of injury accidents/year. This was chosen instead of the main safety indicator “number of fatalities” for two reasons. First, the number of fatalities suffers from relatively high random variation is not stable enough to be used for most of the projects and actions evaluated. Second, the number of injury accidents is a national road authority performance indicator, and the major one for road safety.

For congestion, the indicator used was congestion costs due to a national study which has just been carried out before the evaluation. Hence, very recent reliable information was available.

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For CO2, the indicator is the amount of emissions CO2 in tonnes/year.

Approach

The evaluation was made by compiling impact assessment results from previous research and studies from Finland as well as from elsewhere in Europe. Specific use was made from the results of Euroregional and EasyWay project evaluations available via http://www.easyway-its.eu.

Expected performance (definition of success)

The main criterion was that the annual monetary benefits of the three main impacts of safety, congestion and CO2 would be of such magnitude that the investment, maintenance and operating costs would be more than offset within 8 years.

Data collection The data was collected from the road register and its accident register, national accident statistics, national emission tool (http://lipasto.vtt.fi/indexe.htm) and the Finnish Transport Agency’s experts.

Data selection

The data was processed project by project with the help of experts. For safety, the experts were harri Peltola and Riikka Rajamäki from VTT; for congestion, Jorma Helin from Finnish Transport Agency, and for CO2, Kari Mäkelä from VTT.

Site specific data on traffic volumes, accidents and their consequences, congestion and CO2 emissions were always used, when such was available. However, site specific data was often missing for especially accidents (usually), CO2 (always), congestion costs (always), and operation and maintenance costs. Instead, the data on average accident rates in different road categories, average CO2 emissions from VTT emission tool LIPASTO, congestion costs from recent Finnish Transport Agency study, and the average percentage of annual O&M costs out of investment costs were utilised to estimate site-specific values.

Analytical techniques and statistical techniques used

The transfer of results from other studies, and assessment of all of the impacts were carried out as an expert judgement. This was usually realised in a mini-workshop, where three or four experts depending on the impact to be assessed discussed each project and its likely impacts first on driving and travelling behaviour, and second the impacts due to these on safety, congestion or CO2. All results were validated with the Finnish Transport Agency and the regional experts.

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5. The Impact of the Project - Results

5.1. Technical Performance

The technical performance was estimated to be as in the “business as usual” case, i.e. on the level usually aimed at and what has been experienced to be sufficiently close to optimal to provide expected impacts at not too high costs.

5.2. Results

Renewal and improvement of road weather information

The project covers the main road network and its links to urban areas. In total, 18 980 million vehicle kilometres are travelled on the network in 2010, with average injury accident rate of 0.075 (accidents per million vehicle kilometres), and the annual number of injury accidents of 1 424.

Based on the Finnish and EasyWay results, good quality real-time road weather information will reduce injury accidents by 11% in adverse conditions. In Finland, 25% of injury accidents occur in adverse conditions, i.e. good quality information would reduce 2.75% of injury accidents. The sub- projects were estimated to account for 1/3 of this improvement, i.e. 0.9% reduction of injury accidents. This would mean an annual expected reduction of 12,8 injury accidents (year 2010 situation).

The CO2 emissions on the network amount to almost exactly 4 million tonnes/year. The measure is estimated to have a negligible impact on the emissions.

The annual congestion costs on the network affected is 40 M€ in 2010. The measure is estimated to have a negligible impact on the congestion costs.

The monetary benefits come thereby solely from the reduced injury accident costs. As the unit costs of the injury accidents in Finland is 471 000 €, the annual reduction of the accident costs would be ca. 6 M€. This can be compared to the costs of the measure. The investment costs are 5.9 M€, and the annual operating, maintenance and purchasing costs ca. 1.2 M€. On the basis of the comparison, the project seems to have quite high economic profitability.

Road ITS Action Plan

Similar assessments were made for the whole road ITS action plan, and the results are presented in Table 2.

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Table 2. Results from the assessment of the Finnish Road ITS Action Plan 2010-2015.

Costs 2010-2015 in M€ Changes in impacts and costs / year Operation & Injury CO2 Conges- Con+Acc Action in the road ITS Action Plan Purch- Accident CO2 Investment maint- acci- emis- tion costs +CO2 asing costs M€ costs M€ enance dents sions M€ costs M€ ICT infrastructures 33,7 4,7 3,6 -59 -0,29 -4,6 -27,7 -9,7 -42 Traffic information 14,2 6,5 1,9 -22 -0,11 -1,28 -10,6 -3,7 -16 Incident management 0,6 0 0,1 -1 -0,06 -2,6 -0,3 -2 -5 Enforcement 2,8 0 0,8 -49 -0,002 0 -22,9 -0,05 -23 Traffic management and control 114,3 0,2 29,3 -91 -0,048 -0,84 -42,9 -1,6 -45 Total 165,6 11,4 35,7 -222 -0,51 -9,4 -104 -17,1 -131

Based on the figures, especially activities in the Incident management and Enforcement domains are very profitably in the economic views. On the whole, the Road ITS Action Plan is expected to provide the impacts sought for, and would annually save more than 220 injury accidents, reduce congestion costs by more than 9 M€ annually (20% of the annual total congestion costs), and reduce CO2 emissions by more than 500 000 tonnes (4% of the annual total road transport related emissions).

5.3. Reliability of Results

The estimates and expert judgements were carried out with the aim of being conservative in the estimates, i.e. to avoid optimism in the estimates. Empirical results from Finnish or similar conditions were always applied when possible. Hence, the reliability of the results is likely satisfactory. The main sources of bias are:  Poor transferability of impacts assessment results  Errors in vehicle kilometres driven  Exceptional CO2 emissions (in comparison to average)  Exceptional Accident rates  Inadequate Congestion statistics

5.4. Research Questions Answered

All research questions were answered, see 5.2.

5.5. Overall Assessment

Summarise the main findings in terms of their impact on European objectives under the headings below.

5.5.1. SAFETY

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5.5.2. EFFICIENCY

5.5.3. ENVIRONMENT

The renewal and improvement of road weather information is estimated to have only negligible impacts on CO2 emissions.

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6. European Dimension: Transferability of the Results

The results are transferable especially to similar road transport systems as in Finland. This would mean countries, where adverse road conditions especially connected to snow, ice and slippery road surfaces are a major transport problem, and where the population is scarce and widely dispersed resulting in a long road network, with low average traffic volumes and congestion levels.

Annex 1: Technical Annex

Selected Indicators

Safety  Number of injury accidents/year

Congestion  Congestion costs in million euro/year

CO2

 Amount of emissions CO2 in tonnes/year.

Breakdown of Project Costs

The costs of the projects are the following:

Invest- Invest- Operation Purcha- ment FTA ment & maint- sing M€ Costs in 2010-2015 M€ others M€ enance M€ Renewal and improvement of road weather information 5,9 0 3 0,8 Road ITS Action Plan in total 165,6 12,4 11,4 35,7

It should be noted that the costs for some projects, especially some very large ones in the traffic management and control domain, do not include the investment costs. This is due to the fact that these investments are embedded in the investment costs of major infrastructure projects funded separately, outside the ITS Action Plan. On average, the purchasing and operation/maintenance costs are three-year costs, differing between 0 and 6 years..

Data Collection Methods

The data was collected from the road register and its accident register, national accident statistics, national emission tool (http://lipasto.vtt.fi/indexe.htm) and the Finnish Transport Agency’s experts.

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