In February 2007 the new traffic system management system for the Greater Leipzig area successfully passed acceptance tests by the customer, the DEGES. The DEGES performed the project co-ordination of all sub-projects on behalf the federal state of Sachsen-Anhalt, the free state of Sachsen and the city of Leipzig. In the first construction phase the new dWiSta variable message signs (dynamische Wegweiser mit integrierten Stauinformationen - dynamic direction signs with integrated congestion information) were set manually.
This initial project stage could be put into operation just in time for the FIFA football world cup in 2006. In two subsequent steps, the sub-centres for active network management and the automated setting of the dWiSta in the area of the federal motorways passed acceptance on February 1st 2007, and on February 2nd 2007 the urban traffic management centre set up by our consortium partner GEVAS software GmbH followed suit.
The sub-centres are based on Heusch/Boesefeldt's GeoDyn2® management middleware product, offering standard components for data processing, user interface, visualisation and logging.
The traffic control model and the connected strategy manager for the coordination of the inter-urban and the urban traffic management centre are project specific developments. The strategy manager enables consolidated control measures which do not only consider the requirements of the federal motorway and the city but also the state of the dWiSta, where in case of a failure or malfunction of individual text display components, subsumed texts can be defined for the remaining output units.
The IP based TLS-over-IP protocol is used for all centre-to-centre well as for the centre-to-roadside communication, as it was defined by the ASFINAG, Austria in 2004.
At the project's final meeting held on February 28th 2007 the operators already described use cases of the dWiSta beyond the original design. The high flexibility of the applied technology and the corresponding user interface allow, for instance, to inform truck drivers in advance about fully occupied parking sites, with a positive impact on the tailback on the site's entry slip road. The dWiSta are also used to warn road users in case of a congestion at the location of the road works on the A14 west of the motorway ring around Leipzig, which can be detected only manually.
Whereas the installation of the dWiSta boards in the area of motorway junctions had been initially challenged, the operators are now - only a few months after the first manual sign settings - considering extended installations especially in this area.
Finally, it should be noted that at the project closing meeting everyone of the participating parties thanked each other for the fruitful and constructive co-operation, be it on part of the customer, the project management, the infrastructure provider or our consortium.
Taking into consideration the number of parties involved and the pressure of time due to the world cup, it was due to this prolific co-operation that it was at all possible to successfully conclude this project in time, following German V-Model 97 software process model.