This paper has significant implications for urban planners in creating more sustainable cities that duly consider the commuting needs of residents, and cautions against the optimism that WFH can relieve urban transport problems despite jobs-housing imbalance. Spatially, significant drops in CI were found not only in the central business district and urban cores but also in some new town areas. Within a day, morning peak congestion was more relieved. Results show that under WFH arrangement, peak-hour congestion has been alleviated. In this study, we analysed the congestion index (CI) at peak hours, when commuting-related congestion is typically most serious, throughout different waves of the pandemic in Hong Kong. However, changes in congestion patterns within a city have not been studied in-depth. Under these circumstances, it was reported that traffic congestion has been alleviated in many cities. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, WFH arrangement has been encouraged or enforced to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Theoretically, commuting-related congestion can be relieved by promoting working from home (WFH). Sydney had the longest daily commute of 71 minutes.Īccording to AIMES, connected transport can reduce the economic cost of road crashes by more than 90 per cent and help reduce the cost of congestion.Traffic congestion has been a persistent problem in cities globally. In 2017, city dwellers spent 66 minutes travelling to and from work each day, a 20 per cent rise from the average of 55 minutes in 2002. By 2031, when the city’s traffic congestion price tag is expected to rise to $10.4 billion, the corridors serving growth areas in the outer northern suburbs will become the most congested due to population growth.īusy roads and crowded public transport currently contribute to long commutes for workers who live in capital cities. The annual economic cost of road accidents in Australia is an additional $27 billion.Īt peak hour in Melbourne, the busiest and most congested route is the Tullamarine Freeway between Melbourne Airport and the city. In 2016, traffic congestion cost the Australian economy $19 billion – a figure Infrastructure Australia warns will rise to $40 billion by 2031 without continued infrastructure investment. The sensors monitor the flow of vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians and public transport through the grid, providing a platform for real-time testing of connected transport technology. A network of smart sensors connects the transport environment within a six square kilometre area in Carlton on the edge of Melbourne’s CBD. “If we can upscale the application to provide more accurate prediction with machine learning and real-time data, it will soon be possible to substantially reduce delays in hotspots across Melbourne and many locations across the globe.”Įstablished in 2016, AIMES is a pioneering ‘living laboratory’ that aims to test highly integrated transport technology to deliver safer, cleaner and more sustainable urban transport in Melbourne. “The application observes the nature of traffic and figures out complex traffic patterns across the network through machine learning built into the technology,” says AIMES Director Professor Majid Sarvi. The University of Melbourne’s Australian Integrated Multimodal EcoSystem (AIMES) – a collaboration between PeakHour Urban Technologies, the Department of Transport in Victoria and Telstra – has developed a large-scale AI application hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to predict traffic conditions up to three hours ahead.ĪIMES researchers believe the use of AI in traffic management will cut commutes by 20 per cent. A world-first project using artificial intelligence to help ease traffic congestion and reduce commute times in major cities could be available soon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |