2024 Cycling World Championships: Transportation Network CH supports cooperative traffic management
During the 2024 UCI Road and Para-Cycling Road World Championships in Zurich, cooperative traffic management based on the data provided by Transportation Network CH ensured that the most important navigation services were informed about the daily road closures and could offer alternative routes to people on the move.
Challenge: Major nine-day event with many road closures
The UCI Road and Para-Cycling Road World Championships took place in Zurich at the end of September 2024. The global sporting event was both a major attraction and a challenge: 53 road races were held over nine days. The circuits ran through Zurich’s city centre and surrounding municipalities in the canton of Zurich, causing daily closures of major roads. For five days, the eastern part of Zurich was only accessible via one single road.
Solution: Cooperative traffic management based on Transportation Network CH
As, in addition to the local population and delivery vehicles, many visitors from Switzerland and abroad travelled to the event by car or other motor vehicles, information had to be sent promptly and up-to-date to all navigation devices and radio stations. Thanks to a cooperative traffic management team from the city and canton of Zurich, the city of Winterthur, the local organising committee of the event, as well as Viasuisse* and Prisma Solutions, the most important navigation services were informed of the daily road closures and could offer alternative routes to people on the move. Road users were efficiently guided to their destination by digitised information on closures, diversions and other measures via the navigation services HERE, TomTom, Apple Maps, Waze and Google Maps. The targeted recording of closures also enabled optimised planning and coordination with other road traffic-related situations, such as construction sites and events, which also affected traffic flow in the same period.
* Viasuisse is Switzerland’s leading competence centre for traffic information.
The basic network of Transportation Network CH has greatly simplified the publication of road closures. Thanks to this data basis, the closures could be mapped very accurately and efficiently.
Proven in practice with close cooperation
Viasuisse used the TRAFF-X software for traffic information, which utilised the basic network of Transportation Network CH as the data basis. The canton of Zurich recorded all closures. Data on the closures was imported and “matched” to the basic network of Transportation Network CH in TRAFF-X. “Matching” took place within TRAFF-X and not via the Matcher from Transportation Network CH, as this was not yet fully developed at that time. This meant the closures could be integrated in TRAFF-X and exported in a standardised manner via DATEX II, a data format that the navigation services can process. Viasuisse distributed the traffic information data, which the five most important navigation services in Zurich used to offer alternative routes to road users.
Viasuisse decided to use Transportation Network CH because the spatial data basis is topologically closed, contains up-to-date and complete geometries – each with a unique ID – and has a suitable level of detail, enabling traffic management and traffic information to be to be efficiently developed on the basic network.
Close contact was maintained with the navigation services throughout the event. Continuous checks were made to ensure that the closures were displayed correctly and that appropriate navigation recommendations were provided. This approach proved successful. When the routing failed on one of the nine race days at a specific traffic junction for some providers, they were quickly alerted to the fault and the navigation services were able to make corrections.
Conclusion: Reliable data basis and good interaction with navigation services
The basic network of Transportation Network CH has proven itself to be a reliable source of data. Both traffic management and traffic information for the major event were efficiently built on this basis. With its correct and quality-tested geometries, it created an optimal basis for guiding road users on alternative routes. The data flow worked throughout. The closures were correctly displayed at all times. The interaction with the navigation services also worked very well. While routing difficulties were encountered in isolated cases, these were quickly corrected. This allowed Transportation Network CH to demonstrate its quality and practicality in a real application for the first time at the 2024 UCI Road and Para-Cycling Road World Championships. Thanks to the effective coordination between technology and everyone involved, the feared traffic chaos was avoided.
There is a strong case for using Transportation Network CH again for future events or traffic management at other locations: it is updated in a traceable manner, runs smoothly and has complete geometries – each with a unique ID.
Links
Federal Office of Topography swisstopo
Seftigenstrasse 264
3084 Wabern
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