Author(s)

E Antonucci, F Garzia & G M Veca

Abstract

The continuous increase of vehicles inside cities leads to un unsustainable traffic flow that, in historical cities such as Rome, in Italy, leads to a congestion situation characterized by a high environmental pollution due to the vehicles emissions. It this paper we illustrate an automatic vehicle access control system which is capable of controlling and reducing the traffic inside the historical centre. 1 Introduction The historical centre of Rome has been defined a limited traffic zone (LTZ), where access is allowed only to the vehicles of resident people, policemen, shop owners, ambulances, service vehicles, and to every kind of scooter. The LTZ is a wide quasi-circular zone, with few entrances and exits, that were controlled directly by the policemen, that checked the presence of the proper authorization of the car, represented by two logos that must be exposed on the front and on the back of the vehicle, released by the proper city office. This sight control of authorized vehicle need a lot of human resources, due to the high traffic flows, and can lead to various kind of mistakes. For this reason a proper automatic system, called \“Iride” (Italian translation of the term Iris) system, has been realized, so that all the check operations are executed by it, without any need of human controllers. The system is composed by a proper number of lanes for each entrance, so that the vehicles slow down their velocity and follow a well defined path. Authorized vehicles are equipped with a proper low power microwave transponder, the so called on-board unit, that is equal for everybody, where the

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