SERTI Project - Spanish Assessment Report

SERTI Project - Spanish assessment report

SERTI Project

Spanish assessment report

CONTENT

I.-The presentation of the Spanish panel.

A.- The panel selection.

1.- The selection method.

2.- The Spanish panel.

B.- The following of the panel.

1.- The user’s dossier.

2.- The weekly logbook.

C.- The “logbook” of the assessment following.

II.- The assessment presentation.

A.- The passive and active panels.

B.- The assessment data.

1.- Frequency of the consultation of the service.

2.- The travels.

3.- The received events.

III.- The services assessments.

A.- The influence of the RDS-TMC service upon the behaviour of the panel.

1.- General data.

B.- The service assessment.

IV.- The receiver assessment.

V.- Conclusion.

The SERTI project aims to :

 set up a pan-European RDS-TMC service by associating 4 different RDS-TMC services (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) in order to test :

 the technical interoperability,

 the compatibility,

 the cross-border continuity,

 and the cost of this type of service.

 help the manufacturers to market RDS-TMC receivers.

This document will present the results of the Spanish part of the SERTI assessment.

As Technical manager of SERTI for the Spanish part, LISITT has accepted to be in charge of the assessment made by the Spanish panel.

I.-The presentation of the Spanish panel.

We remember that the assessment had 5 phases :

Phase 1 : the selection and the validation of the receivers.

Phase 2 : the writing of the service specification.

Phase 3 : the panellist selection.

Phase 4 : the assessment.

Phase 5 : the analysis of the results and the writing of the report.

In this document, we will study the phases 3, 4 and 5.

A.- The panel selection.

1.- The selection method.

The panellist selection is based on criteria defined by the technical manager and validated by the SERTI European steering committee. These criteria can be found in annex 1. Each partner of the project has followed them.

In Spain, two types of receivers (GNS, PSA) have been tested within the SERTI project.

PSA panellists in Spain (30 panellists), like in the other countries, have been chosen by the car manufacturer.

GNS panellists in Spain has been chosen in the following way: ten by PSA, three by DGT and two by LISITT.

2.- The Spanish panel.

45 panellists agreed to participate to the assessment of the RDS-TMC service and receivers.

B.- The following of the panel.

For the assessment, we have used:

- user dossiers,

- weekly logbooks.

In Spain, one meeting with the GNS panellists and their manager have been organised (in Citröen, Madrid, the 28th September 1999), in order to :

 bring GNS panellists together,

 present the service and the receiver,

 answer their questions.

For the panel of PSA, the person in charge of the project for PSA has organised the same type of meetings.

1.- The user’s dossier.

With the receiver, each user has received a dossier (see annex 5) where he has found logbooks (see next paragraph) and all the necessary information:

 description of the service and the project (in particular the assessment),

 helpful phone numbers,

 map of the SERTI network,

 receiver instruction book.

2.- The weekly logbook.

This questionnaire (see annex 3) has been filled in by the panellists after each trip and sent back each week to LISITT, by postal mail.

These logbooks provide details of:

 the journey of the panellists (cross-border) and the date of their presence on the SERTI road network (lines 1 to 4 and question 1).

 the panellist’s behaviour towards the use of the receiver and the use of other traffic information services (questions 2 and 3).

 types of received messages (questions 4 and 6).

 the panellist’s behaviour after having received a TMC message, which concerns his trip. (question 5).

 the quality of service after each trip (in comparison to the other traffic information services / questions 7 to 10).

 the different problems the panellist encountered with his RDS-TMC receiver (question 11).

C.- The “logbook” of the assessment following.

The Spanish panel has assessed the service between October 1999 and January 2000.

All the panellists have not been active:

 10 GNS panellists have sent back the logbooks,

 16 PSA panellists have sent back the logbooks.

II.- The assessment presentation.

In this chapter, we will mainly present some results of the study of the logbooks.

A.- The passive and active panels.

26 panellists have been active during the assessment period by sending back logbooks. All of them have been men except one woman from PSA.

The following data presents the profile of the active panel:

 16 PSA panellists are lorry drivers.

 8 GNS are “professional” drivers (marketing people from PSA).

 2 GNS are “non professional” drivers.

The following table presents the repartition of the panel according to the different profiles of users.

The following graph represents the repartition of the PSA panel according to the different ages of the panellists.

B.- The assessment data.

The PSA panel is constituted by lorry drivers, employees of Citröen and Peugeot. The GNS panel is constituted by 10 professional drivers from Citröen and five non-professional drivers from LISITT and DGT.

1.- Frequency of the consultation of the service.

The following diagram shows the moment when drivers turned on their TMC receiver.

We can appreciate the high utilisation of the receivers for pretrip information, more than 80% with both receivers. Regarding the continuity in the use of the receivers during the trip, we appreciate a relevant difference depending on the receiver used. GNS receiver has been used almost only continuously, in the 40% of the trips, while PSA receivers have been used continuously in the third part of the trips and more than 50% discontinuously.

2.- The travels.

The previous table shows that during more than 70% of the travels, the panellists have received messages. This high percentage can be explained because of the continuity of the service and the existence of roadwork events, which has a long duration.

3.- The received events.

The following diagrams present the different events which have been broadcast during the assessment of the services RDS-TMC, between the 1st October 1999 and the 20th January 2000.

Congestion has the highest percentage, probably because most of the trips had the departure or the destination in one main city, and this kind of event is very frequent around this cities, specially in peak hours. There was a high percentage of travels without messages (23% with GNS receivers and 18% with PSA ones). Finally, it seems relevant to point that only two other messages were received, one not specified and one more “traffic lights not working”.

Due to a delay in the implementation of Spanish DATEX node, it was not possible to exchange information between France and Spain, so, no Euroad messages were broadcast during the assessment period.

III.- The services assessments.

A.- The influence of the RDS-TMC service upon the behaviour of the panel.

1.- General data.

The following pie-chart presents the behaviour changes of the panellists after having received a message.

Before analysing the pie-charts, it is important to highlight that more of the 75% of events received by users didn’t affect them. Different causes can explain these fact, although it seems that a bad use of filters were made by most of panellist, or that, as users selected long routes they received events that were cleaned up when they arrive to the point were the event was caused.

Regarding the behaviour of users, we can appreciate that the highest percentage decided to drive more cautiously. The 26% of PSA users which received a message that affects them and answered others didn’t modify their route. The last relevant data is that in the 22% for GNS and in the 17% for PSA users decided modify their route. That means, a starting reliance with the service.

The following pie-chart shows the timeliness of the system in comparison to the traditional radio bulletins.

More than 20% of panellists could react earlier than relaying on the traditional spoken radio services. This percentage seems very significant taking into account that a low percentage of users used the receiver continuously and a lot of radio programs transmit traffic information regularly. I.e. RN5 (Radio National 5) connects with DGT (General Directorate of Traffic) each 20 minutes to broadcast on life the state of the roads.

Finally, regarding the services assessments, we can see in the following pie-chart the reception of erroneous messages on the TMC receiver.

Most of the messages were received by users in the right way and were true messages. This data reflects the accuracy of the system. Anyway, the system must be improved to reduce this percentage to zero. It’s very important to achieve that all received messages were accurate and timeliness to improve the reliability of users in the system.

B.- The service assessment.

As we can see there are a high percentage of users who didn’t find in their route any event that wasn’t announced by the TMC receiver. Anyway, it seems quite relevant the amount of people who find them.

As we can see, there is a big difference between the answers given by PSA users and GNS users, probably due to, more that the kind of receiver, the profile of users who tested the receivers. Some of the questions reflects contradictory answers, due surely to the use made of receivers: “TMC is quicker” and “Radio is quicker”. The rest of examples reflects the reality of the service: “TMC is more accurate”, “Radio is more complete”, “Radio gives information about urban traffic”, “With TMC you don’t have to wait for radio bulletins”, ….

As we have expose in some points before, a big amount of users listen to radio bulletins in addition to the TMC service, this radio programmes are: RNE (RN1 and RN5), Cadena Ser, Onda Cero, Catalunya Radio, RAC-105, Cadena 100, M-80 and COM_Radio. Most of these are national programs, and a few amount of them are regional, or specific radio programs of the toll motorways. The source of information broadcast in this programs is exactly the same that the one of the RDS-TMC service (General Directorate of Traffic), except toll motorways programs who broadcast directly the state of their roads. Anyway, except minor events, information about toll motorways is also stored, managed and offered for free by DGT.

IV.- The receiver assessment.

Most of users did not appreciate problems with the TMC receiver. From the ones who encountered problems we can classify the answers in two groups:

Problems with the signal or with the TMC service:

No TMC signal (possible due to a bad coverage in some points of the network far from the main cities). In one only trip was reported an event which was not reported by the service and no local information (evidently because the service only cover SERTI roads).

Problems with the receiver: Dangerous to handle while driving, difficult to handle, bad fixing device, short battery autonomy…

V.- Conclusion.

Although users think the service improves the safety (they are prevented and reduce their speed) and the comfort of the travel (they can avoid the problem taking an alternative route), we have seen that the service and the receiver still need to be improved.

The main reference service regarding information is the radio. Users are used to assimilate traffic bulletins as they receive them through the radio bulletins. An important question regarding this issue was: “Did TMC messages enable you to react earlier than traffic bulletins?”. It is necessary to study the answers and deduce their causes, some of them can be: the use of the receiver (a few percentage used the receiver continuously), and the good infrastructure of radio bulletins. I.e. radio national of Spain (RN5) connects each 20 minutes with General Directorate of Traffic who transmits on life the traffic situations. It is important also to highlight that the main source of information of radio bulletins is the same of the TMC service (General Directorate of Traffic)

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LISITT7th March 2000