Can C-ITS lead to the emergence of Traffic Management 2.0?

Advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) allow the transportation community to foresee relevant improvements for the incoming years in terms of a more efficient, environmental friendly and safe traffic management and operations. In that context, new ITS paradigms like Cooperative Systems (C-ITS) enable an efficient traffic state estimation and traffic control. C-ITS refers to three levels of cooperation between vehicles and infrastructure: (i) equipped vehicles with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) adjusting their motion to surrounding traffic conditions; (ii) information exchange with the infrastructure; (iii) vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Therefore, C-ITS make it possible to go a step further in providing real time information and tailored control strategies to specific drivers. As a response to an expected increasing penetration rate of these systems, traffic managers and researchers have to come up with new methodologies that override the classical methods of traffic modelling and traffic control. We focus in this paper on the potentialities of C-ITS for traffic management with the methodological issues following the expansion of such systems. The methods for introducing a cooperative modelling framework within existing traffic models are discussed. The paper also provides a building block for Cooperative Traffic Management (CTM). Finally, the potential applications of such blocks are presented from a technical as well as an operational standpoint.