A high-tech method to collate Dublin's traffic information will help to manage the city's growing travel needs, writes Natalie Byrne

Dublin-based Iona Technologies has been selected by the Dublin City Council to provide an intelligent traffic management system to collate citywide traffic information, integrating the LUAS into the existing transportation systems.

The LUAS is Dublin city's first high -capacity, high-frequency, and high-speed light rail transit system and plans to address the increasing gridlock problem by ultimately reducing the need for private transport.

Iona Orbix was chosen for its excellent notification functionality and feature-rich development environment, says Dublin City Council spokesperson Mr Brendan O'Brien, head of technical services.

"We are confident that Orbix will provide an integration framework to manage our ongoing traffic needs," he said.

Dublin City Council will incorporate the system as part of a larger integrated transportation strategy to improve accessibility to and from the greater Dublin area.

Orbix is Iona's most widely deployed CORBA implementation, supporting some of the world's most advanced and large-scale integration projects at Global 2000 companies in telecommunications, financial services, aerospace, government services and manufacturers, including Zurich Insurance, JP Morgan Chase, AT&T and Vodafone.

CORBA (or Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a technology standard that the software industry has adopted for making computer systems talk to each other reliably, according to Mr Andrew O'Sullivan, vice-president of services for Iona Technologies.

"Software standards such as CORBA are managed by industry organisations, made up of both software producers and consumers, which makes it possible for different vendor technologies or applications written in different programming languages to work together," said Mr O'Sullivan.

Orbix will be interfaced with Dublin's existing system, Sydney Co-ordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) providing real-time traffic status data to allow SCATS existing data to communicate with a variety of systems at traffic control and monitor centres around the city; allowing traffic controllers to respond quickly to changing traffic conditions and provide a smooth operation of LUAS.

"Metropolitan traffic management is a very complex problem for municipal IT organisations. Automated traffic control systems have severe real-time requirements that demand extremely large volumes of data to pass efficiently through a heterogeneous mix of software and equipment," said Dr Chris Horn, chief executive of Iona Technologies.

Iona is involved in a similar traffic management system for the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau in advance of the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics, where the volume of traffic is expected to increase by 40 per cent.

"This is the kind of integration challenge that Iona specialises in: we are uniquely able to solve such complex problems now, while positioning our customers to deal with their future challenges with flexibility and agility," said Dr Horn.

Vehicle ownership has grown by 100,000 in the past five years, without a corresponding increase in road capacity, which has led to reduced average speeds, increased variability in journey times, a spreading of morning and evening peak periods, and increased deterioration of the city's environment, according to Dublin City Council.

"The solution to Dublin's traffic problems depends on achieving a significant change in the travel patterns of commuting motorists. We must accept that the ever-increasing demand for private car travel cannot be catered for and adjust our travel patterns accordingly. In order to achieve this, we are encouraging a shift to public transport," said Mr Owen Keegan, director of traffic, Dublin City Council.

Dublin City Council is continuing to address the traffic congestion situation and is providing other alternatives to car commuting: promoting the construction of 11 Quality Bus Corridors, providing a 160 km Strategic Cycle Network, improving taxi and hackney services, and providing bus-based Park 'N' Ride facilities.

The official LUAS launch will take place on Wednesday June 30th of the Green Line, which connects Sandyford to St Stephen's Green and will be free to all passengers until Sunday 4th July in honour of the opening.