Melbourne Connected Living Transport Lab

Washington D.C. – January 9, 2017 – The University of Melbourne is collaborating with industry leaders from Australia and around the globe, including PTV Group, to integrate data from VicRoads, Public Transport Victoria, the city of Melbourne and the city of Yarra, with traffic updates to deliver insights into traffic planning, pedestrian flows, public transport efficiency and freight movements. PTV Group technologies PTV Visum, PTV Vissim and PTV Optima real-time traffic state prediction will be deployed within this living Transport Lab.

A 1.2 square km ‘test bed’, taking in busy freight and commuter routes and shopping strips — including Australia’s most congested road, Hoddle Street — will be fitted with thousands of sensors, enabling communication between thousands of devices and data sets that have until now been islands — such as tram and train movements.

The Dean of the Melbourne School of Engineering, Professor Iven Mareels, said, “This would pave the way for connected and autonomous vehicles. The whole world is talking about driverless vehicles and climate change, energy conservation and reducing pollution.”

“These are issues faced not just by Melbourne as it seeks to retain the quality of life that has made it the world’s most livable city for many years, but by thousands of cities around the world that desperately need to accommodate expanding populations, economic activity and community expectations.”

Project leader Majid Sarvi, Professor in Transport for Smart Cities, said, “Connecting smart sensors with smart devices opens up a whole world of connectivity.”

Miller Crockart, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing Traffic, stated, “For PTV Group, this academic collaboration is crucial to the development of the next generation of mobility technologies. We’re pleased to announce at TRB that we will also add our latest generation of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) component software programs.”