Dublin City Council ... Traffic flow improved by big data analytics used to predict bus arrival and transit times

1. Travel & Transportation, GovernmentLet’s build a smarter planet
Dublin City Council delivers housing, water and transport services to
1.2 million citizens in the Irish capital. The roads and traffic department
manages the city’s road network and a bus fleet of roughly 1,000 vehicles.
The Opportunity
To improve public transport services, Dublin City Council sought a way
to dynamically monitor the movement of each of the city’s 1,000 buses
and better gauge if each one was operating on time.
What Makes It Smarter
The city deployed an intelligent traffic control solution that uses geospatial
data from GPS-equipped buses to visually display the near-real-time
position of each bus on a digital city map. Controllers can locate areas
experiencing delays at a glance and instantly drill down to live camera
feeds to identify root causes. Predictive analytics take into account speed,
traffic flow and other factors to continually generate up-to-date estimates
for bus arrival and transit times.
Dublin, Ireland
www.dublincity.ie
Dublin City Council
Traffic flow improved by big data analytics used
to predict bus arrival and transit times
Solution Components
• IBM®
InfoSphere®
Streams
• IBM Research

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Real Business Results
The solution provides a dynamic, near-real-time view of bus movements
and arrival times, empowering traffic controllers to help ensure buses run
on time and riders receive excellent service. Using the solution’s dynamic
digital map and camera feeds, controllers can more quickly identify
congestion in its early stages and gather the information they need to
mitigate the impact on affected areas. By making underlying bus fleet
trends more transparent to planners, Dublin City Council can also more
effectively manage resources and optimize bus routes to help save energy
and reduce pollution.
For More Information
Please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner.
Visit us at ibm.com.
To learn more about Dublin City Council,
visit www.dublincity.ie/RoadsandTraffic/Pages/Roads.aspx.
“Our traffic managers can make more informed
decisions, based on what’s happening on our bus
routes at any point in time. That’s a powerful tool.”
— Brendan O’Brien, head of technical services, roads and traffic department
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