ITS World Conference 2009 review

Martin Leak and Philippa Walker with Terry and Joye Brown attended the ITS congress held in Stockholm. Martin presented a joint paper prepared with Terry at an interactive session entitled The Procurement of ITS Projects In New Zealand.

Opportunity was taken to have a study tour of various engineering and traffic facilities while travelling to Stockholm. The study trip commenced in Marseille and travel was by road through France, Belgium and the Netherlands to Amsterdam.

From Amsterdam, the party flew to Copenhagen where major engineering structures were visited, before departure by air to Stockholm. The travel by road enabled a firsthand look at significant parts of the French motorway and highway network as well as observing tollways and commercial traffic.

Figure 1: St Benezet

Figure 2: Pont du Gard

The opportunity was taken to visit two historic bridges in the South of France, Pont du Gard and St Benezet in the Nimes/Avignon area. Both are Roman era structures that trace bridge construction back two millennia. Pont du Gard is a major aqueduct standing some 49m above the river valley and was part of a very early water supply scheme serving Avignon. St Benezet was part of the old walled city of Nimes and only part of the original structure remains.

Figure 3: Millau Viaduct

Figure 4: Millau Bridge

On the second leg of the trip the major feature was the Millau Viaduct, recognised as one of the outstanding modern structures. Completed in 2004 the 2.5 km long structure stands 270m above the Tarn River Valley. The longest of the seven piers is 245m above ground and the unique viaduct incorporates 87m high towers above the deck at each of the seven piers to support the cables providing strength and stability to the 342m long continuous steel deck beams. With the stayed cable towers, the overall structural height is 343m making it taller than the Eiffel Tower. The bridge architecture was developed by an Englishman, now Lord Foster, while the structural design was undertaken by the French. Construction was by Eiffage, the company started by Gustave Eiffel to build the Paris landmark. Its size, form and grace combined with the functionality of spanning the last remaining valley in the Central Massive links Paris to the South of France by a continuous motorway, provides a monumental but functional structure. The tour continued into the Bordeaux area. Enroute the road passed through the town of Albi where other old bridges crossed the Tarn River. These were traditional arch bridges with unique high level sub-arches over the piers giving a very graceful elevation. In Bordeaux itself the St Pierre bridge over the Garrone River which is fed by the Tarn River, was studied as was the urban motorway and train system within the city. The major motorway to motorway interchanges around the ring road presented challenges and interesting design features. The vineyards of the Bordeaux region did of course generate a secondary point of interest also.

Figure 5: Bridge in Albi crossing the Tarn River

Figure 6: Leonardo Da Vinci is interred (Amboise)

The trip continued via the old English sea port of La Rochelle and then into the Loire Valley and some of the major bridges and structures that have been erected within that river system. There is no doubt that the relative closeness of the Loire Valley to Paris has contributed to its wealth and standing within France with massive chateau’s and castles. In the town of Amboise we visited the castle where Leonardo Da Vinci is buried.

Figure 7: Normandy Beach

Figure 8: Museum (World War II – Normandy Landings)

The trip north to the Normandy Beaches took us over new tollways and past major new infrastructure development south of Caen. We spent two nights at Bessin, close to the Omaha Beach landing site and near the beautiful town of Bayeaux. The famous tapestry depicting William the Conqueror took the attention of one of the party while the beaches, museums and war cemeteries were the focus of others. The engineering input into the landings with the Mulberry and other harbour units highlighted that war is not just about guns and weaponry. The trip from Normandy to the French/Belgium border took us through La Havre where interest centred on the Normandy cable stayed bridge over the mouth of the Seine River. While this relatively new structure was a feature, a second heavily curved truss bridge over a secondary channel was of great interest. The bridges certainly improved access into the heavily industrialised sections upstream of the main La Havre port.

Figure 9: Cable Stayed Bridge

Figure 10: Truss Bridge

Our stay on the French /Belgium border was at Arras which we later learned was the centre of some of the earlier WW1 battles. However the target was to visit the main Kiwi cemetery of Tyne Cot near Passchendale. While we had some navigational issues we did visit Ypres and the well known Menin Gate Memorial before visiting Tyne Cot and the New Zealand Memorial. A moving experience for all.

Figure 11: Menin Gate Memorial

Figure 12: New Zealand Cemetry

The route took us northwest to Bruges near the North Sea coast and then east toward and around Antwerp before heading almost northeast into The Netherlands and approaching Amsterdam for the east. The number of tunnels and major bridges were features as were the number of times we were directed from one motorway to another. Notwithstanding all the re-directions, an accident still held up traffic by more than 30 minutes. This delayed our trip into Amsterdam and did not give us the opportunity to fully see the major route from near Utrecht to the main city.

Figure 13: Lane Control Signals (The Netherlands)

However it was evident that while the system had expanded considerably, the nucleus of the ATMS Terry had seen in 1994 on his first foray into ITS, remained the fundamental traffic management system on the extensive Dutch motorway network. This system is similar to the lane control signal network erected on the Auckland motorways and has also been adopted by Sweden for traffic management in Stockholm. While there are pressures to introduce regulatory speed limits rather than advisory changeable speed signs in NZ, the concepts developed in the late 1990’s still appear logical and are operationally successfully in the Netherlands and Sweden. Amsterdam with its multi-faceted transport network of rail, trains, buses and cycles was a fascinating city to observe and a delightful city to explore on foot and from the canals. There are lessons that can be taken from cities like Amsterdam and Oslo in Norway where trams and buses share central rather than outer parts of the roads corridor which leads to a more orderly use of the road space by cars, cyclists and pedestrians.

From Amsterdam we flew to Copenhagen and the difference between the European culture and the Scandinavian influences were very evident. Copenhagen is flatter and more open than we expected and has a surprising number of rivers and canals. The road network is good with wide arterials, strategic tunnels and many optional parallel routes. Cycles are important but there is a feel of more car travel notwithstanding the expanding rail network.

The visit to Copenhagen allowed us to see two recent major projects; the Storebealt Crossing between the Danish mainland (Jutland) and Zealand (Copenhagen is on Zealand) and the Oresund Crossing from Copenhagen to Sweden. Both are road and rail crossings and incorporate navigable sections. The Storebealt has a long trestle bridge on the western side with an anchored suspension bridge. Trains travel in a tunnel over the navigable length. The Oresund has a major cable stayed navigation span from an artificial island with a long trestle on the Swedish end. This is an over/under bridge for road and rail traffic respectively. From Copenhagen both modes are in a major immersed tube tunnel.

Figure 14: Storebælt Bridge

Figure 15: Øresund Bridge

The primary target in Stockholm was the ITS Congress held in a large venue just south of the city. While attendance numbers were down on previous years and there was the absence of major UK and US suppliers, the trade display contained many items of interest and we were all able to meet old acquaintances and generate new contacts. One person who was emigrating to NZ was interviewed and considered a potential staff member.

We were hosted by Nick Drew and Derek Lister from the UK who trade as Nicander and have continued to work with them to establish contacts for a visit to Australia and New Zealand in November. The dinner gave us the opportunity to meet two senior engineers from the Swedish Road Authority.

The Congress had up to 12 consecutive sessions, field trips or activities and displays and the available choices made it difficult to concentrate on particular themes. However presentations attended were of a good quality. Our paper which Martin presented was in a mixed Innovation session but with 7/8 papers there was no time allocated for questions.

Martin and I made visits to the Trafik Stockholm TMC and a late night visit to a major urban tunnel during a complete directional maintenance shut down. Both technical tours were exceedingly interesting and wholly appropriate to the tasks Resolve Group are undertaking. Overall we were able to see the form, conditions and operations of extensive parts of the European strategic road network and were able to compare the transport systems in five countries. There are clear differences between each network and this span of features will test us in making suggestions in a technically orientated report. One thing that struck me was that in each of the cities visited, the motorway network delivers patrons almost to the departure gates. Schipol Airport has motorways under taxiways and close to the runways due to its proximity to the city centre while in Stockholm, Allanda Airport is about 45 km from the central areas but road access is easy. Along with Copenhagen, all three cities have good rail connections into the airports also.

We were all grateful to the Board for the opportunity of undertaking this extensive tour and attending the ITS Congress.