An Open Interface to Urban Traffic Control

Many day-one applications of Cooperative ITS (C-ITS) in an urban environment require detailed information about traffic control, like the current state of the signals and the timing of their upcoming change. European Urban Traffic Control (UTC) systems conform to various (local) standards for connections to signal lamps, detection equipment and central management systems. However, the interface between UTC and C-ITS systems is not standardised yet, and implementations rely on proprietary protocols. This severely limits the choice of suppliers for the owners of the UTC and C-ITS systems. The POSSE project [1] addresses this issue by promoting open specifications. There are several methods to come to an open specification, for example through standards delivery organisations. A quick alternative is that industry parties propose and discuss an open and shared standard, similar to the Request For Comment (RFC) procedure for internet protocols. This paper presents an open protocol to interface C-ITS systems with UTC systems. This protocol is currently used in multiple European projects like FREILOT [10], eCoMove [11] and Compass4D [9]. Topic: New mobility apps for consumers and businesses - making use of Open Data