Bogotá Mobility Secretariat (SDM) has partnered with ClearRoad to steer a three-month-long pilot within the metropolis of Bogota, Colombia to check the feasibility of a telephone-based utility to measure congestion, handle site visitors and supply knowledge on congestion pricing methods.
The pilot, referred to as ParceGo, seeks to enhance site visitors administration, cut back GHG emissions and enhance the lives of residents.
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In 2021, Bogotá was ranked because the eighth most congested metropolis on the earth, in keeping with the Inrix index, with drivers estimated to spend round 94 hours per 12 months sitting in site visitors. In March 2020, in the course of the top of the Covid-19 pandemic, town was pressured to droop its pico y placa (peak and plate) site visitors administration system for the primary time because it was launched in 1998.
The pico y placa system was adopted to control site visitors throughout rush hour by limiting the transit of automobiles within the capital based mostly on their license plate numbers and the day of the week.
Bogotá launched an enhanced model of the legacy pico y placa system in June 2020 entitled “Pico y Placa Solidario”. The improved site visitors administration system provides new choices, paid exemptions, and a high-occupancy automobile (HOV) exemption program. Though the improved system has the potential to fight air pollution, cut back site visitors, and promote higher automobile use and carpooling, it has confronted a number of challenges associated to enforcement and handbook verification that has restricted this system’s effectiveness.
The ParceGo pilot follows SDM’s name for proposals to design a system that eliminates the issue of enforcement and explores new site visitors administration methods that may assist town cut back the detrimental impacts of congestion and gather funds to finance sustainable modes of transport within the metropolis.
ClearRoad, a US-based transportation and expertise firm, is working alongside Cornell Tech, a technology-focused campus underneath Cornell College, to execute the pilot and to research the information to find out the optimum site visitors administration technique and pricing.
“It’s essential to set costs that may obtain town’s targets — lowering congestion, elevating revenues, and offering equitable entry to the roadways,” mentioned Dr Nikhil Garg, assistant professor at Cornell Tech. “To set these congestion costs, we have to know the way individuals will react to the costs: will they pay, change their route, or change their journey? And it’s particularly essential to know how individuals will differ of their responses.”
Throughout the three-month pilot which takes place from April to July 2022, contributors are requested to file all their journeys utilizing the ParceGo app. The app will measure total utilization and collect knowledge on driving behaviors in recognized congestion zones and essential roads which have been chosen by town. An incentive scheme is at present being run to encourage app use amongst volunteers and is meant to offer knowledge that may assist decide optimum incentive and pricing schemes.
“Our hope in collaborating within the pilot is to know these questions [on pricing and behavior], and to develop the technical instruments wanted to offer higher congestion pricing sooner or later,” added Dr Garg.
Thus far, the pilot has obtained greater than 2,530 purposes with 1,377 recognized eligible customers; 244 customers had been ultimately chosen to take part within the pilot. Eligible contributors needed to be a minimum of 18 years of age, Android smartphone customers, and automobile house owners. All sorts of automobiles had been permitted to use, together with small vans and business automobiles, to precisely seize the variety of journeys and automobiles that often happen within the metropolis.
Future improvement of the ParceGo app is anticipated to incorporate options that enable customers to sign-up or pay for exemptions, in addition to digitally confirm automobile occupancy for HOV exemption. Apart from figuring out optimum pricing, the pilot hopes to show the effectiveness of a phone-based app as a way for site visitors administration and for gathering congestion knowledge.
ClearRoad CEO, Frederic Charlier, mentioned, “ParceGo is the primary of its sort that explores alternative routes to implement congestion pricing. It’s promising as a result of it exhibits that we will implement subtle and forward-thinking site visitors administration approaches by adapting them to the native context and profiting from reasonably priced applied sciences already within the palms of Bogotá residents. We don’t must accept legacy techniques, we simply should be slightly extra artistic.”
On the finish of the pilot, ClearRoad and Cornell Tech will submit a report back to SDM on the success and shortfalls of the expertise and the feasibility of adopting a phone-based app as a way for site visitors administration and enforcement. The report can even embrace an evaluation of driving habits and urged incentive or pricing fashions that town can make the most of to realize its targets of decreased congestion and decreased air pollution and GHG emissions that may in the end enhance the lives of its residents.
This story relies on an article that was initially printed right here.
Photos: Adobe Inventory.
