Smart roads

Abstract

The recovery of the economy, after the crisis at the beginning of this century, causes an enormous increase of traffic on the roads in the Netherlands in and around cities. After many years of discussion road pricing is considered as the most reasonable solution. Car drivers have to pay additional tax if they use the entrance roads of a city during peak times. A network of surveillance cameras along the roads have been installed and tested to register entering cars on the access roads. For many years sensors in the road surface are used to measure speed of cars on the roads to generate alarming messages for upcoming traffic jams and to provide alternative routes via panels along the road. Finally there is also a huge electrical network of traffic lights along the roads. By the enormous rise of mobile phones the interest in existing wired networks along the road is decreasing. In this paper we discuss the revival of wired networks and the integration with wireless networks.