Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot
The Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot is Australia’s largest on-road pilot of connected vehicles and infrastructure. Connected vehicle technology, also known as Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), enables vehicles to talk to other connected vehicles, roadside infrastructure, and centralised traffic management systems to share awareness messages. The use-cases include the following: advanced red-light warning (ARLW), road hazard warning (RHW), back-of-queue (BoQ), turning warning for vulnerable road users (TWVR) and road works warning (RWW). Speed limits are also provided – referred to as in-vehicle speed (IVS).
Start and end dates: Planning commenced in 2016 and the on-road pilot will be completed in 2021.
Lead organisation: Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads
Location: Ipswich, Queensland, Australia
Additional organisations: Motor Accident Insurance Commission of Queensland, iMOVE Australia, Queensland University of Technology, Telstra, City of Ipswich, Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications
Contact person: Miranda Blogg
Link to project website: Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot
Included technologies
- Vehicle connectivity: standards-based interoperable C-ITS
- Vehicle connectivity: mobile data network based
- Automated driving and driver support: driver support - warnings
Project stages
- Testing for specific performance
- Pre-deployment
Included locations
- Urban motorway
- Rural main highways
- Urban high traffic / high speed roads
- Urban low traffic / low speed roads
Benefits directly sought by the project
- Increase knowledge and experience of the technology
- Increase public support to assist deployment and adoption
Project scale
- 350 public participants' vehicles have been retrofitted with C-ITS equipment including a vehicle station, a roof rack with an antenna and a display tablet mounted to the windscreen
- 30 traffic lights have been fitted with C-ITS equipment (roadside stations) and a 300 square kilometre cloud service (central station) has been developed to support the provision of C-ITS messages direct to vehicles
Further details on included technologies
The project has adopted European standards for C-ITS (e.g. ETSI G5) including the use of a Security Credential Management System (SCMS).
Objectives
The objectives of the pilot:
- validate the impacts and safety benefits of C-ITS, and user perceptions
- demonstrate technologies and build public awareness
- grow government’s technical and organisational readiness
- encourage partnerships and build capability in private and public sectors.
The project progressed through a planning phase during 2016-2018, development and testing during 2018-2020 and the pilot during 2020-2022.
Research questions that the project aims to address
Each participant will be fitted with the technology for a period of nine-months. In the treatment period, the participant may experience a "heads-up" or "take-action" warning, which is provided when the vehicle's speed and distance meet certain thresholds in relation to the hazard. The posted speed limit – static, variable, school or road works speed - is provided as a persistent display and there are no warnings related to speeding. In the baseline period, the participant does not experience any warning or speed advice.
The pilot will investigate the interactions between technical systems and driver behaviour. Two primary research questions are posed:
- Does the system improve road safety?
- Is the system acceptable to drivers?
The questions will be answered through objective data gathered and compared during the baseline and treatment periods, and the subjective data gathered from the participants questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups. The safety evaluation results for this study will depend on exposure and will inform extrapolation to 100% market penetration of such interventions.
Lessons learned to inform the conduct of trials
- To improve information flow, interpretation of specifications, and joint development, collocate the team.
- Frequent iterations and product regression were common and automated test cases should be adopted early.
- Despite a lengthy planning phase with vendors to test capability, develop the specification, and agree on the deployment schedule, the field stations development took almost 6 months more than agreed.
- Data is key to a pilot project - do not underestimate the level of effort required to build, optimise and maintain the data systems and tools.
- The system has been designed to support regular updates – since go-live, all components have been updated in response to defects.
- Despite 20,000 km of on-road testing prior to the pilot go-live, with over 1 million km and growing of on-road driving from the participant, many new learnings are emerging. Large scale pilots are important.
Lessons learned that inform future technology deployments
- The use-cases are highly reliant on accurate positioning and spatial data. Governments data - the underlying road network model and intersection maps, and the location of speed signs, roadworks signs and hazards - is either inaccurate or not yet readily available. As a result, a lot of effort was/will continue to be expended to ensure that the datasets are fit for purpose.
- Most of the message latency occurs within the legacy traffic systems and the vehicle station. Some of the larger intersection traffic controllers were replaced to improve the performance; however, a more mature controller is required, and vehicle station software enhancements are ongoing to support both short- and long-range use-case latency requirements.
- Approximately one third of the intersection approaches do not meet the 300 metre short-range communication requirements – the height and location of the roadside station antenna require further optimisation.
- The field stations need to consider more carefully the reliability of GPS (used for time) and cellular communications, which are fundamental to the provision of C-ITS.
- The pilot's security credential management implementation is working well, with very few issues reported to date.
Benefit assessment of the tested technologies
- The project business case (2016) estimated the benefit-cost ratio over a 30-year period of a moderate penetration of C-ITS and 10 safety use-cases as 3.4.
- If there were to be 100% penetration of C-ITS devices in new cars, the business case assessed a cumulative crash reduction of 20% and a 3% fuel and emissions savings based on results from international pilots.
Links to any other supporting project reports
Project webpage for resources and publications
iMOVE: Connected Vehicle Pilot: Safety and user perceptions evaluation
Last updated: May 2021.