TECHNOLOGY EXPORT: From the 401 to Beijing
Markham’s Delcan Corp. has signed on to help unsnarl traffic in the booming capital of Beijing
May 28, 2007 04:30 AM
Chris Sorensen
Business Reporter
Beijing’s snarled traffic, though nightmarish, has yet to surpass the perpetual gridlock found in places like Manila or Bangkok – and Joseph Lam is doing everything in his power to make sure it stays that way.
The 61-year-old executive of Markham-based Delcan Corp. is currently heading up a pilot project that aims to unclog the Chinese capital, where a booming economy has led to unprecedented levels of car ownership – and traffic jams.
MICHAEL STRUPARYK / TORONTO STAR
Joseph Lam, president of Markham’s Delcan, at the ministry of transport’s Compass Centre on Wilson Ave. His firm designed the traffic control system that manages Highway 401 and the 407’s electronic toll system.
With an estimated 1,000 new cars hitting the streets of Beijing every day, the Chinese government is wringing its hands about the long-term impact of chronic congestion and, more immediately, what will happen to the capital’s already choked streets and expressways when the world comes to visit during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.
And so, in a move that will no doubt strike frustrated Toronto drivers as ironic, Beijing turned to Canada’s largest city – and Delcan in particular – for help solving its traffic woes.
“We basically went to Beijing and said we could solve all their problems because we already have a pretty good system,” says Lam, referring to Toronto’s congested Highway 401 and the system of vehicle-detection equipment and closed-circuit TVs that Delcan designed to monitor it.
Toronto has historically been considered a leader in traffic management – it was the first city in the world to have its traffic lights controlled by a computer in 1963. And several local firms are now considered to be top global players in the field.
But while Delcan and its Dutch partner, DHV Group, may have the necessary know-how to get Beijing and its 15 million residents moving again, it’s not as simple as lifting a computerized system originally built for Toronto’s long, ribbon-like Highway 401 and grafting it on to a series of ringed-expressways on the other side of the globe.
Still, there’s a huge incentive to get it right in Beijing. While the pilot project is relatively small – worth about $3 million – Delcan sees huge opportunities in China, where there are an estimated 100 cities with populations more than one million, most of which are expected to become clogged with cars, trucks and SUVs over the next few decades.
Rush hour in Beijing is no longer an early-morning and late-afternoon event. Instead, with an estimated 3 million cars on the roads, it has become an all-day phenomenon that stretches as long as 11 hours. The clogged roads present both a transportation nightmare and a mounting environmental threat as idling cars, buses and trucks spew clouds of exhaust into the city’s already grimy air – so much so the International Olympic Committee has expressed concern that smog may impact the performance of athletes in Beijing.
Lam says Beijing selected Delcan, with annual sales of about $80 million, and its Dutch partner because of the firm’s long history of involvement in major transportation infrastructure projects – Delcan has been involved in the design of both Highway 401 and the Gardiner Expressway, among others – and its status as a major player in the growing field of intelligent transportation systems.
That includes the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s Highway 401 COMPASS system, which was considered state-of-the art when it was first installed in 1991 and still keeps traffic rumbling reliably over North America’s busiest stretch of highway.
The nerve centre of COMPASS is located inside MTO’s Downsview Operations Centre. There, operators monitor 94 colour closed circuit television cameras that are strung up along 59 kilometres of freeway.
There are also terminals that display data provided by more than 3,100 vehicle detectors, essentially metal-detecting loops of wire, buried under the roadway.
The detectors measure how many cars are travelling over a section of roadway and how quickly. The data is then fed into a computer that uses complicated algorithms to calculate traffic flow and highlight potential problems. When traffic begins to slow or bunch up, operators use closed circuit TV cameras to zoom in on the problem. Images are displayed on banks of wall-mounted monitors. If there’s an accident, emergency crews can be dispatched with a push of button.
Lam says COMPASS was a huge selling point for Beijing officials, who wanted a system with a proven track record and toured the MTO’s facilities extensively before making their decision.
A before-and-after study conducted by Delcan revealed that, thanks to COMPASS, accident response times on Highway 401 have been reduced by 65 per cent, to 30 minutes from 86 minutes previously. Not only does that help save lives, Lam says, but it has an enormous impact on the flow of traffic, with some studies suggesting that every minute an accident remains on the road translates into another 10 minutes of congestion.
In Beijing, Delcan’s solution was to design a system that was similar to COMPASS, but with a few significant improvements. First, the Beijing Traffic Integration and Evaluation System, or BETIMES, will be co-ordinated with another system that controls traffic lights on Beijing’s street grid, helping to prevent a jam on the highway from spilling over on to city streets. That’s something that doesn’t happen in Toronto, where the city’s traffic lights are operated independently.
As well, Beijing drivers will also have access to real-time traffic information through numerous “variable message signs,” which are similar to the ones operated by the MTO that hang above Toronto-area freeways, but will provide even more traffic data.
“If you drive around Beijing’s 3rd Ring Road, you will see large signs that display the travel time and colours that show the speed of traffic,” says Sini Stojicic, the vice-president of business development for EIS Inc., a Toronto company that is supplying wireless sensor equipment for the Beijing project.
The variable message signs are meant to help Beijing drivers avoid congestion, but also help make more efficient use of road capacity. Studies show that a typical highway lane can accommodate about 2,000 vehicles an hour. But the flow can be reduced to just 300 vehicles during an hour when traffic becomes bumper-to-bumper in sections.
In the future, Stojicic says similar data will be beamed into on-board vehicle navigation systems. Such systems are already being used in some parts of the United States, he says.
Finally, Beijing traffic operators will have access to sophisticated computer software system that allows them to identify potential bottlenecks and predict how drivers will react to different traffic scenarios, such as the closing of a major road.
“That way, the operator can test out different scenarios to see which one would be the best,” says Lam. “This can be done within 5 or 10 minutes of an incident so police can implement the proper decision.”
The challenge, of course, is climbing into the minds of literally millions of motorists – a task that’s made even more difficult by the fact that drivers in Beijing behave differently from those in Toronto.
“Toronto drivers are very interesting,” Lam says. “They tailgate quite closely, but they are fairly smart about it,” meaning they tend not to crash into each other.
In Beijing, he says motorists have a tendency to ignore traffic signals, which presents a unique problem for Delcan since its system relies on the use of message boards to direct traffic throughout the city.
“If you can’t predict people’s behaviour, it’s very difficult to predict the impact of traffic incidents,” Lam says. “We have to spend a lot of time in Beijing calibrating our model to reflect local situations.”
Delcan and its partners hope to have the Beijing traffic management system up and running by this summer. That way Beijing authorities will have a full year before the Olympics to work out any technical kinks and drivers will have a chance to become accustomed to the new variable message signs.
Lam says Delcan and its Dutch partner have secured another contract in Luoyang, located in China’s Henan province, and says the company is short-listing another 20 Chinese cities as future candidates.
However, many governments lack the space or money to build new roadways to accommodate extra cars, buses and trucks. So Delcan is gradually making the shift from specializing in building highways to focusing on improving traffic flow.
It has already designed traffic management systems and done consulting in dozens of cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Caracas, Hong Kong and in Malaysia.
The firm also helped install traffic management systems in two other Olympic host cities: Atlanta and Salt Lake City.
But while Delcan appears to have successfully built upon its roots in Toronto and the city’s reputation as a leader in traffic management, there are now concerns that Canada’s biggest city is at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.
“The expertise is being marketed very successfully around the globe,” says Eric Miller, director of a joint program in transportation within the University of Toronto’s engineering department. “But whether we’re applying that technology very well at home is another story.”
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Beijing traffic
15 MILLION: Population
500,000: Expected number of foreign visitors for 2008 Summer Olympic Games
1 MILLION: Expected number of domestic visitors
3 MILLION: Number of cars currently on Beijing’s roads
1 HOUR: Length of time it takes for a six-mile trip through the city centre during rush hour
1,000: Number of new cars added to Beijing roads each day
3.3 MILLION: Number of cars estimated to be on Beijing’s roads by 2008
1 MILLION: Number of cars authorities hope to keep from city streets during the Olympics by limiting private car use
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Sources: AP, Beijing 2008 website
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