 |
ILOG Connection is produced by the Communication Department of ILOG S.A. in Gentilly, France |
|
TRANSPORTATION NEWS 
Lyon Unjams City Traffic 
Helping trams negotiate heavy traffic in Lyon, France, is part of the challenge that led Spie Trindel, one of the key electrical engineering groups in Europe, to create an automated traffic management system based on ILOG Rules and supported with ILOG visualization. 
With gridlock becoming a daily problem in Lyon, the city decided to build an on-street light rapid transit network, called the Lyon Tramway, to transport an estimated 120,000 passengers in and out of the city each day. Part of the tramway's success depends on CRITER, the new Spie system that regulates the flow of automobile traffic in Lyon. CRITER reduces traffic congestion and maximizes the efficiency of public transit systems, particularly the new tramway, by collecting data from road sensors and managing more than 15,000 traffic control devices, including stoplights and variable message signs. Making CRITER work is a mix of ILOG business rule technology and Spie know-how. ILOG Rules enabled Spie to translate its expertise in traffic management into the logic used by CRITER to process the road sensor data in operating the traffic control devices. CRITER is also equipped with an interactive display system created with ILOG visualization, showing traffic and other data in real time.
Bilbao Metro Fulfills Goal Bilbao, Spain, has achieved its objective of improving local public transportation with a subway line that uses a train and driver scheduler based on ILOG Solver and ILOG CPLEX, the leading constraint programming engine, and ILOG visualization. 
Built by Thales Information Systems, a leading European systems and services company, particularly in subway management, the Transport Offer Generator (TOG) uses ILOG optimization to create itineraries for the trains and assign the metro's 150 drivers. The schedules are displayed with a graphical interface -- built with ILOG Views and its add-ons -- that allows Bilbao Metro planners to refine the proposed itineraries or react immediately to unforeseen events. TOG can generate a valid solution for scheduling the trains in 10 minutes, and 20 minutes for the drivers. The previous system took more than an hour on average to produce a solution. Currently the subway makes more than 600 runs a day, transporting an average of 170,000 people daily. In 2000 alone, the 41km line carried approximately 60 million passengers, an increase of about 5 percent over 1999. The subway has made such an impact since being opened in 1995 that the city's other forms of public transportation are now scheduled around the subway's operation. Bilbao Metro runs through densely populated areas inhabited by most of the city's commuters. To ensure the safe and reliable operation of its trains, the subway has to be able to accommodate holidays and other local events, and reschedule for unexpected delays, like accidents or equipment failure, in real time.
JR East Japan Information Systems Company Cuts Delay Time by 50% Recovering from an unexpected delay may soon take less time for "bullet train" operator East Japan Railway Company (JR East), the world's largest railroad in terms of revenue, as it switches to a rescheduling system based on ILOG Solver and developed by JR East Japan Information Systems Company (JEIS). Currently being tested as a prototype, the rescheduler named CIBERS uses ILOG constraint programming to optimize and accelerate recovery from unexpected delays resulting from accidents, bad weather or mechanical failure. The current system uses manual scheduling based on planner experience and a traffic simulator. Tests with the prototype have shown that recovery time can be improved up to 50 percent on the 890km network of high-speed "shinkansen," or bullet train, lines. ILOG Solver has been essential to the success of CIBERS. The optimization component's flexibility enables the system to take into account all the operational constraints, including safety requirements, locomotive performance and labor regulations. The old system depends heavily on the planners' experience and cannot accommodate all the parameters. Using live data in real-time tests, CIBERS tracked 40 trains for an hour through 48 stations in the network. The rescheduler halved the average amount of time lost to delays, improving the already astounding performance of Japan's legendary on-time train service. JR East joins a prestigious list of subway and railroad companies leading with ILOG software. Among the best known are SNCF, Deutsche Bahn and Renfe. This information is based on the presentation given by JEIS at WCRR2001.
|
|
|