A new traffic management technique which has been trialled in Oxfordshire for the past year has proved how air quality can be significantly improved through a technique to manage traffic jams before they happen.

The NEVFMA scheme uses ITS (UK) member, the global transport modelling firm Aimsun’s traffic simulation to reduce congestion and therefore harmful, traffic-related pollution, with analysis over the last two months showing the system delivers an average 7% decrease in emissions, with improvements of up to 40% recorded on some days.

NEVFMA, which stands for Network Emissions/Vehicle Flow Management Adjustment, is a project funded by ITS (UK) Executive Member Highways England via fellow Executive Member Innovate UK and delivered in partnership with members Siemens Mobility and Oxfordshire County Council along with EarthSense. It uses the Aimsun Live solution to generate short-term predictions for traffic and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) dispersion to help Traffic Control Centre operators know when traffic and therefore emissions will build up, and make the most effective traffic management decisions to minimise congestion.

Last June, the trial began using Aimsun Live to predicting short-term traffic congestion using real-time traffic information and traffic modelling.  During the initial months of the project, which took place during significant Covid-related restrictions, Aimsun Live’s analysis of mitigation strategies meant traffic, tail pipe emissions and therefore air quality could be improved 65% of the time.

The results are even more impressive for the past two months when traffic has been much closer to normal conditions.  Two thirds of the time, a response plan analysed in Aimsun Live led to a better traffic management strategy compared to base Intelligent Transport Systems settings, leading to an average decrease of 7%, with an incredible 40% improvement observed in the most extreme cases.

“The system reliably analyses and reports improved air quality and mitigation strategies to tail pipe emissions,” commented Aimsun’s UK Managing Director Gav Jackman.  “However we believe that further optimisation of traffic management response plans could enhance this even further.  Now that traffic volumes have increased, we see even bigger benefit of evaluating and deploying traffic management response plans in real time based on varying traffic flows and air quality conditions.”