Modus Consult, an engineering firm based out of Germany, has used Miovision Scout to collect data for a variety of traffic studies over the years. They were recently approached by the traffic team in Bad Breisig – a tourist town of about 10,000 residents – to find out what was causing traffic congestion along the main corridor and provide recommendations to help minimize the problem.

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Bad Breisig sees roughly 200,000 motorized vehicles through its city center each day along the B9 – a state street running east along the river Rhine, providing many small towns with a direct connection to the cities of Koblenz and Bonn. This leads to an increase in traffic during peak times which disrupt the urban development of the city center, limiting access to businesses, increasing safety concerns for pedestrians, and contributing to an increase in emissions. In order to present recommendations to the town, the project required the collection of quantitative and qualitative traffic data, on all modes of transportation. The study included stationary and flowing traffic, heavy vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrian behavior at crossings along the B9, as well as the effects of traffic jams around intersections.

Equipment Used

Engineering firms trust Miovision Scout to gather the data necessary to complete their traffic studies. It’s portable and durable, and provides firms with reliable, and verifiable count data. But, Scout is more than just a basic vehicle counter.

Many engineering firms and data collectors use Scout to gather bicycle and volume counts, or use the video captured to visualize queue lengths at traffic signals. Miovision Scout with Connect can even be used to collect travel time using MAC address data.

The team at Modus Consult used Scout to gather data for the project due to the fact that they could use it to run many simultaneous studies. The expedited project timeline also led the team to select Scout, thanks to its quick and simple deployment capabilities. Plus, with access to video-based technology, many of their qualitative questions could be answered, through the capture and analysis of video data showing the behavior of cyclists on bicycle paths, and queue lengths (see: Image 2) in front of traffic signals. The project had to be completed within a week and included the following:

• 24 locations to count vehicles and bicycles
• 13 locations to monitor parking behavior
• 10 locations to count pedestrian crossings
• Capture and analysis of travel times between two location

 

Data Captured

In addition to the video data collected during the study, Scout Connect was used to capture MAC address data, which helped the team identify travel times through town during the day and capture daily fluctuations and peak times. Further, MAC address data provided insights into ingress and egress streets into to n, as well as which streets were used. The traffic flows during the day were derived from the latter data, forming the basis for evaluating shifts in traffic flows. Overall, 28 Miovision Scout units were deployed to collect data for this study including, TMCs, as well as pedestrian and bike counts. Additionally, occupancy rates and usage of parking lots and roadside parking were assessed by field teams to estimate demand.

Analysis

Once the data was captured, it was displayed in a bar chart over time. The chart showed the daily volume at a cross-section with the selected bin size of 30 minutes (see image). The individual black bars represent the total heavy vehicle volume during each 30-minute stretch during a 24-hour period.

Conclusion

The information gathered in all of the locations included in the study, including travel time data, ultimately helped the team conclude that a single traffic signal was the cause of all the backup traffic along the corridor. Further, the data showed that the town assumed shift in traffic to parallel routes only occurred for a few hours, or not at all, disproving the theory put forward before the study. The analysis of the crossing pedestrians confirmed the safety concern relating to the conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians.

The engineering firm was able to make data-backed recommendations following the in-depth traffic study, thanks to data collected with Miovision Scout. These recommendations included a plan to control ingress and egress into the town via the traffic signals located outside the town and reduce the speed limit within the town to a level which maintained free-flowing traffic. Alternate considerations included the complete removal or retiming of the signal in question, to minimize congestion, or to reroute traffic via new-build streets. The team at Modus Consult has presented their findings and recommendations to the town and are awaiting a decision on how to implement the recommendations.

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About Modus Consult

Modus Consult is a traffic engineering company offering traffic planning, environmental planning, city planning, and architecture services. Since its foundation in 1998, the company has been involved in projects including, the introduction of the public bus transit in Bruchsal, the study of the A44 between Eisenach und Kassel, development of the land use plan including zoning and construction planning of the city of Krottbach, and the redesign of the city center of Forst. Modus Consult has now grown to an engineering firm with three offices, catering to many municipalities and cities.

Modus Consult

Dr.-Ing. Frank Gericke, Fr. Architekt/Stadtplaner
Pforzheimer Straße 15b
76227 Karlsruhe
Tel.: 0721/9 40 06-0
Fax.: 0721/9 40 06-1