Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Jian-yu (陳建宇) said the ministry and the nation’s six special municipalities would form a data technology team to integrate, analyze and share the “big data” collected from smart cards.
By analyzing the integrated dataset, Chen said, solutions to various traffic problems, including easing congestion at bottleneck road sections, could be found which might help reduce traffic accident casualties.
Chen made the statement at a panel discussion hosted by the Institute of Transportation, in which officials from the transportation departments in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung talked about using the datasets from smart cards to manage transport systems and improve transport services.
“The ministry has applied the integrated data from transport departments, hotels and the weather bureau to estimate the travel time for drivers on Freeway No. 5,” Chen said. “In the future, the large dataset could also help bus companies enhance the efficiency of their operations and change their business models.”
Chen said the ministry would push to establish a platform in which transportation officials could share traffic data. He said that the platform would also allow public transport system, statistics and information science experts to work together, adding that the local and central government officials would meet regularly to exchange data and enable the government to determine new transport management policies.
Taipei City’s Department of Transportation Director Chung Hui-yu (鍾慧諭) said the government should use eTags — the tag used to access the electronic toll collection system — for vehicle management, from driving on the freeways to paying for parking. She said a similar policy should be enforced on the public transport system as well, with the entire nation using only one smart card.
“In the past, each county had its own smart card developed by different developers. We will have no future if we keep wasting resources fighting against each other and do not consolidate the information,” Chung said. “We need to work together and strive to export this technology to other countries.”
Both Taoyuan and Taichung had expressed a desire to use the data to re-evaluate bus routes, with the latter saying that it would rearrange 206 bus routes operating in the city.
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