Smart Road Technology for Traffic Management and ITS Infrastructure Assessment: A Case Study of Muscat Express Highway

This technical work describe infrastructure requirement and the working principles and procedures involved in operation of a Smart Road. A Smart Road is similar to a conventional highway but the difference is, it is equipped with the electronic gadgets required to capture static and dynamic physical entities occupied on the road at a given time and location. Nowadays traffic safety and highway congestion has become a serious concern to the Authorities and required to be managed them within the available resources. Also it is not possible to increase the capacity of highway infrastructure to compete with increase in traffic. In cities on highway system, large amount of traffic data being generated and an integrated approach is required for the efficient management transportation system. Smart Road is an innovative approach wherein Information Communication Technologies (ICT) is merged with traditional infrastructure and integrated with digital technologies. Critical examination of literature review reveals that many technologies are available for data capturing and management. Notable among them are by using ultrasonic sensors, light sensors, motion sensors, camera and IOT devices. The data collected by the devices would be managed through cloud computing and big data analytic methods. To assess the current traffic situation spot speeds and traffic volumes are captured for peak and non-peak on the Express Highway and from the data captured 85th percentile speed and LoS are estimated. Smart road technology is discussed for transportation system management. And IT infrastructure requirement for capturing traffic related data demonstrated for the selected road in Muscat.