Client Situation

All around the world, traffic and public transport control centres typically operate independently. However, as cities grow day by day and needs of commuters become more complex, city executives and transport authorities and stakeholders, recognise the requirement for improved coordination and information sharing. To achieve this, a -so far- limited number of cities have developed dedicated transport coordination centres that integrate transport and/or traffic operations to a certain degree.

Our client, a city that encounters more than 30 million daily trips with multiple public transport systems and a high level of “intelligence” in traffic management, wanted to acquire a better understanding of this trend towards enhanced coordination and to investigate the options to be implemented locally.

M-Prime was asked to describe global best practices launching a benchmarking exercise and to develop the Concept of Operations for the local mobility coordination centre incorporating lessons learnt from benchmarking and feedback of stakeholders.

The way to problem solving

Leveraging significant lessons learnt from the international benchmarking exercise and consultation with local transport stakeholders, we forged the conceptual design of the mobility coordination centre for our client. We firstly charted the mission, objectives and functions of the centre.

As a next step, we determined the proposed governance and organizational schemes, as well, as the centre’s working patterns and high level staffing and resourcing plans. The definition of the states of operation, processes, managerial tools and reports was the next step of the conceptual design of the mobility coordination centre.

The recommended incident coordination scheme for the centre was a key area of focus for M-Prime. We have also set the foundation for defining the much needed technological support of the centre. Finally, we made recommendations for the location and layout and we drafted the delivery roadmap.

Impact

Based on a thorough analysis of the coordination gaps in the local environment, we defined a set of functions to be performed by the mobility coordination centre: information sharing, hub coordination, incident coordination, data analysis and Travel Demand Management and coordination for construction and maintenance activities and special events.

The above functions are related both to real time transport and traffic operations and to future planned events. Therefore, we proposed for the centre to establish two teams, one focusing on operations and a second focusing on forward planning activities. This distinction provided the foundation for the entire design of the new centre.

We have also suggested for the status of mobility in the city to be characterised by three states, normal. Intensified or critical.

About 30 processes will enable the operations of the centre and reports will be issued according to our plan.

We implemented our customized methodology and we defined more than 150 incidents, organized in five macrocategories and 22 subcategories for which contingency plans may be developed post a risk assessment.

Robust principles were set for the support of the centre by technology, while information requirements and possible sources /channels of information from more than 30 stakeholders were defined.

Our client is currently working on the implementation of the coordination centre based on the roadmap we developed.

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