CLIENTS

  CASE STUDIES

Client : INTERLINK ROADS
URL : www.m5motorway.com.au
Project : Traffic Reporting System for Sydney’s M5 Motorway

Profile
Interlink Roads is the developer and operator of the M5 South-West Motorway, a high-speed transit corridor spanning 22 km of Sydney's south-west from Prestons to Beverly Hills. Around 118,000 vehicles per day use the M5.

Challenge
A detailed understanding of traffic patterns is essential for the efficient management of a busy highway.
Traffic throughput information is used not only for financial reporting but to inform the planning of maintenance and other operational functions.
Variables such as lane, trip time and direction, vehicle type, tag type and the proportions of electronic vs. cash tolls are all significant.
For the M5, it was previously a three-hour daily task for one person to manually collate and compile data from multiple sources to produce traffic reports based on such criteria. The cost of this one daily task essentially amounted to almost half of a full-time salary.
Dataforce observed this repetitive manual task while working on-site on another M5 data project, and suggested devising an automated reporting system.

Solution
Dataforce analysed the data types and sources involved, and the business use of the data.
It then designed an automated traffic reporting system which extracts data from a number of different databases, and processes and compiles it into a detailed, formatted report.
Much of the data extraction and processing is performed by nightly batch-processed jobs.

Benefits
The automated Traffic Reporting System has eliminated a costly and monotonous task, saving the company an amount close to half a full-time position.
Time and resources have thus been freed for other tasks, and the availability of up-to-date traffic data has been improved.