C-Roads Greece

Description

Greece, under the frame of the C-Roads Platform initiative, participates as a member state with its national pilot since June 2019. The Greek pilot takes place at two test sites, one in Northern Greece (Egnatia Odos Tollway Pilot) and one in Attica Region (Attica Tollway Pilot), and its main objective is to conduct a specific set of Day 1 and Day 1.5 C-ITS services by using a balanced mixture of ETSI ITS G5 and cellular communication technologies.

A breakdown of the selected Day 1 C-ITS services of the Greek pilot contains:

• Road works warning with special focus on lane closure and other restrictions
• Hazardous locations notification which includes the cases of a stationary vehicle, weather condition warning and obstacle on the road
• The in vehicle signage (which applies to the equipped ones embedded with such technology) where variables message signs of “free text” as well as speed advice messages to avoid the shockwave damping effect are sent to vehicles by the road operators
• Probe vehicle data in regards to cam aggregation. Lastly, the Greek Pilot has also selected from the Day 1.5 C-ITS services Smart Routing

Particularly, the above services will be inclusively achieved per case through the two aforementioned test sites. In Northern Greece test site, 30 km of the motorway named “Egnatia Odos” with specific attributes such as geometry, traffic volumes, rural environment, mountainous area, successive tunnels and bridges will be examined and 25 roadside access points (Road Side Units – RSUs) plus one mobile will be installed. RSUs will enable the communication and the ITS messages transfer between vehicles and road infrastructure. In Attica region, 20 km of the road section of Attica Tollway (central sector) within the same prefecture will be examined and 10 roadside access points plus one mobile will be installed.

Currently, the design of the Greek test sites has been completed. C-ITS services to be deployed have also been specified while the necessary procurement process has been initiated. The Attica Tollway test site has already identified the supplier while the other one, Egnatia Odos, is in the process. Finally, the first set of services for the Greek pilot have been launched and validated.

Greece is fully committed to contributing to the C-Roads Platform and be aligned with its results. The ultimate goal is to pave the way and contribute for large-scale deployment of interoperable C-ITS services in Greece.

Location Description

The Greek pilot will provide and test C-ITS services at two test sites, one in Northern Greece (Egnatia Pilot) and one in Attica Region (Attica Pilot). The specific location of each pilot site is the following:

• Egnatia Pilot (Right in the picture below): The road section of Egnatia Odos motorway that will be included in the C-Roads Greece pilot is a rural road section with continuous bridges and tunnels of approx. 30 km with Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) of 11,230 (HGV: 16%). It is managed by a Traffic Control Center (TCC) and equipped with ITS related equipment (i.e. Variable message signs, CCTV traffic cameras, traffic detection inductive loops, meteorological & smoke sensors).
• Attica Pilot (Left in the picture below): This pilot will invove app. 21 km of the central sector of Attica Tollway (motorway consisting of the ring road of the greater metropolitan area of Athens) along the main axis of the road, between the Dimokratias Interchange and Paiania Interchange (from km 21 to km 42 km of the Attica Tollway), corresponding to the section of the motorway with the heaviest traffic (AADT: 53,000 vehicles as per data registered in 2018). This section is also managed by a Traffic Management Center (TMC).

Beneficiaries

The coordinator of C-Roads Greece is the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. The implementing bodies are the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS), University of Patras, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas and Egnatia Odos (motorway operator in Northern Greece).

The consortium includes Attikes Diadromes, the motorway operator in Attica region, the association of all Tollways in Greece, namely Hellastron, and the biggest mobile network operator in Greece, COSMOTE, taking care of the deployment of C-ITS services using its operational cellular network. Moreover, the consortium comprises highly innovative companies in the field of cybersecurity, transport and logistics, 3rd party transport services provision, cloud infrastructure and IoT (G4S, Telenavis and Intracom).

Schedule

The schedule starts with the actual kick-off of the project in June 2019. In the beginning the target is to contribute to the activities and WGs of the C-Roads platform, while the actual Greek pilot activities will start January 2020. The plan is to launch all planned C-ITS services by end of 2021. The project will conclude in June 2023.

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