VERA: online platform for the management of traffic counting provides an optimal planning of the counting points in 2017

It is intended for the management of counting points including the resource planning and offers all results in cards and documents. With the tools provided by VERA, the assignment of the counting assembly can be planned. For example, the decision of places in adequate time frames, to get significant and usable results.

Traffic data at a glance

A fundamental base for the planning of road maintenance is the traffic data. Besides material maintenance and consideration of environmental factors, the maintenance is important to offer safety and performance on the road. Therefore the congestion is one of the main information in maintenance planning. In Baden-Württemberg the daily traffic is catched via radar sensors. They are integrated in guide posts and installed from the rural districts for two weeks to all relevant positions. The guide-post-counter enables a classification of vehicle types, records the driven speed and transfers the data as GPRS-modul combined with the GPS-coordinate to a central server. „Due to VERA we can monitor the incoming counting data on a daily base and were able to optimize various processes since the implementation“, said Dr. Marion Mayer-Kreitz from the Landesstelle für Straßentechnik (LST) of the Straßenverkehrszentrale Baden-Württemberg.

New assembly plan for 2017

The assignment of counting assembly happens with a special developed software modul in the application VERA. The current period for counting is extended over the epoch from 2016 to 2020. In all relevant road sections the traffic should be counted at least once within each period fixed for five years. To have an optimal assessment of the traffic data, different criteria has to be considered for the assembly plan. In 2016 the first counting points were already recorded. But the gained data can differ from the defined requirements due to varying reasons. These counting points does not deliver reliable data for the traffic statistics.

Beginning of 2017 the so called blancing was performed for the first time. It shows which counting points did not deliver state-of-the-art data for the statistics, to consider them once again in the assembly plan for the upcoming year. To monitor the quality of each measuring, VERA is using adequate tools. „The user can reconstruct immediately every incomplete countings or those which does not follow the requirements“, said Dr. Mayer-Kreitz. „The quality control is now automated and simplified.“