NAVTEQ map and traffic data underpin drivetime and accessibility projects
"Real-world road speeds without the need for expensive data collection" – that is how MVA Consultancy, a leading UK-based consultancy working in the public and private transport arena, sums up one of the key potential economic benefits of the NAVTEQ mapping and travel data sets it has licensed through MapMechanics.
MVA is involved in numerous projects that involve monitoring, modelling and predicting the use of transport of all kinds, helping government agencies, regional and local authorities and commercial businesses to formulate their transport strategy and plan for future infrastructure provision.
According to deputy divisional director David Connolly: "There is increasing pressure on all sides for us to come up with more precise and detailed transport modelling, yet we also have to deal with cost constraints, and with the need to gather data in the most environmentally-friendly way possible."
Using NAVTEQ data from MapMechanics is not only helping to deliver these benefits, he says; it has also helped MVA to improve the calibration and validation of various models of Scottish traffic conditions.
MVA decided to obtain the NAVTEQ data from MapMechanics, a specialist in mapping and geographic information systems, because of the company’s long-standing experience with this product range, and its reputation for service quality and backup.
The consultancy is using two NAVTEQ products in combination – NAVTEQ Premium, which is the most fully-featured version of this map data set of streets and inter-urban roads; and NAVTEQ Traffic Patterns, a relatively new product that attaches real-world traffic flow rates and speeds to individual segments of road. The data is gathered by NAVTEQ from a variety of sources including sensors and GPS tracking of vehicles on daily journeys.
MVA is planning to use these products in a variety of ways to sharpen up the accuracy and authority of its modelling. One of these potential uses is to validate their estimates of inter-urban travel times, for example as predicted by the traffic component of the national Land-use and Transport Integration in Scotland (LATIS) model.
This model predicts the time and money costs of travel by different modes such as car, bus or train, and therefore needs accurate estimates of drive-time at different times of day. Previous validation of these journey time estimates has relied on undertaking ad hoc journey time surveys, which are relatively expensive and provide only limited "snapshot" data for specific routes.
NAVTEQ Travel Patterns shows recorded speeds at different times of day – invaluable at reflecting the impact of rush hour traffic on journeys. Using the NAVTEQ data, MVA can validate its model against road speeds for morning and evening peaks and the inter-peak period. And as the data is collected at 15-minute intervals, it can even "slice" the data further into specific time periods.
MVA is also a specialist in accessibility analysis – using detailed local spatial and transport information to compare the relative access to services (education, employment, health-care, retail, etc) to/from different locations by all available modes. For this work MVA staff often uses AccessionT, a well-established accessibility planning software system developed to meet the accessibility planning requirements of the UK’s Department for Transport.
"Historically, we have used default rules for estimating link speeds within our Accession models," explains David Connolly, "but we wanted a more accurate reflection of the impacts of local congestion and road geometry."
He adds: "The attraction of the NAVTEQ data for this work is that they provide consistent network-wide estimates of average travel speeds by time of day, reducing the errors associated with the use of default speed assumptions." Using this approach, MVA is able to offer more robust accessibility analysis models for the whole of Scotland.
A third key use for the NAVTEQ data which MVA is currently exploring is for monitoring road speed data over time. "Our clients might want to monitor journey times for a given route or in a given area," David Connolly says, "perhaps to identify and quantify the outcomes of initiatives designed to reduce congestion or improve journey time reliability."
Because NAVTEQ data varies over time, reflecting new information as it is gathered, he says it can provide MVA with a picture of changing road speeds. "The data can also help quantify the impact of seasonality.
"In the past, if we’d wanted this kind of information we would have had to drive the routes ourselves. This is a greener and much more cost-effective solution."
David Connolly sums up: "We hope the use of NAVTEQ data will allow us to keep ahead of the game when it comes to modelling current and future Scottish traffic conditions."
About MapMechanics
MapMechanics has been providing innovative solutions in logistics planning, sales and marketing, digital mapping and geographic analysis for over twenty years.
MapMechanics uses digital map-based technologies to offer an extensive range of Web, desktop, paper and component solutions for a variety of business applications, from atlas production to business analysis, site selection, customer profiling and vehicle routing and scheduling.
MapMechanics distributes a wide range of data products including AA, NAVTEQ and Ordnance Survey digital mapping, as well as leading business and demographic datasets from many sources throughout the world. This data is listed in the Data Catalogue, which is probably the most extensive and up-to-date printed listing of its kind in Britain. It is published at least once a year, and is also available on the Internet.
MapMechanics is a major supplier of software solutions. It is the UK distributor of the GeoConcept geographic information system, which is used extensively in a diverse range of fields such as retail planning, marketing, healthcare, environmental planning and management, transport and logistics, site selection, network planning and territory allocation, telematics and command and control applications, policing and broadcasting, and central and local government.
MapMechanics also supplies and supports MicroAnalytics’ TruckStops UK and OptiSite UK. TruckStops is one of the world’s best-established scheduling solutions, and OptiSite is a widely-deployed network modelling tool. Backing up its extensive product range, MapMechanics offers a comprehensive service of implementation support and training.