Published by Tomas Bui on
Attikes Diadromes operated and maintained Athens' vital 70-kilometer Attiki Odos highway until October 2024 and continues as its maintainer today. While the company was operating this high-volume highway that serves 285,000 vehicles daily, it faced significant challenges with manual traffic counting and delayed heavy maintenance scheduling using outdated inductive loop systems.
By utilizing GoodVision Live Traffic with Attikes Diadromes’ cameras on strategic sections of the highway, they gained real-time insights into situations on the highway. The results were immediate: 60% reduction in maintenance planning time, 40% potential cost savings through system consolidation, elimination of pavement-damaging infrastructure, and dramatic improvements in reporting speed — from 15–20 days for monthly reports to real-time traffic data dashboards.
The Challenge: Delays, Data Inaccuracy, and Operational Bottlenecks
Attikes Diadromes relied on approximately 500 twin inductive loops embedded in the highway pavement for traffic data collection, creating multiple operational challenges that impacted daily business operations:
Infrastructure and Data Quality Issues
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Infrastructure Damage: Loop installation required cutting into asphalt and using epoxy filling, creating weak points that compromised pavement integrity and led to ongoing maintenance issues
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Data Accuracy Problems: VDS loops provided delayed data and often inaccurate data, undermining confidence in predicting traffic volume and decision-making
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Manual and Delayed Processes: Traffic data required manual counting by control center operators during specific periods, with loop systems providing only end-of-day results rather than real-time intelligence needed for immediate decision-making
Gaps in Highway Operations and Real-Time Response
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Inadequate Real-Time Monitoring: Insufficient real-time monitoring and lack of timely alerts about incidents, road closures, or traffic congestion hampered proactive traffic management and response times
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Limited Analytics and Insights: The existing software lacked predictive capabilities, flexible reporting tools, and real-time processing, making it difficult to predict traffic patterns, understand trends, and optimize traffic flow
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Customization Limitations: Inability to customize features and functionalities to meet specific operational needs and preferences, leading to inefficiencies
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Slow Reporting Cycles: Conventional traffic reports took 1.5 days for weekly reports and 15-20 days for monthly reports, severely limiting responsive management
Limitations in Planning Heavy Highway Maintenance
Planning maintenance windows relied on historical data, human observation through cameras, and experience rather than real-time traffic patterns, making it difficult to optimize lane closures across the three-lane-per-direction system that handles up to 5,000 vehicles per hour. This manual approach significantly impacted traffic management effectiveness in terms of response times.
The Solution: Real-Time Highway Intelligence With GoodVision
Before choosing GoodVision Live Traffic, Attikes Diadromes considered several smaller domestic and international companies for the new real-time traffic management software. Dr. Ioannis Lefas, CEO of Attikes Diadromes, discovered GoodVision at the ITS Congress in Lisbon where he was impressed by GoodVision’s live monitoring with built-in AI technology. Ioannis decided to implement GoodVision Live Traffic to help highway operations in Greece.
Attiki Odos connects some of the most vital transportation hubs in Athens.
Implementation
The main goal of the implementation was to provide precise, real-time speed and vehicle counts for managing traffic congestion and optimizing traffic and toll management. While cameras were already in use on the highway for incident detection and traffic management, an additional twelve cameras were installed at critical locations to capture bi-directional flows for the project.
Why GoodVision Live Traffic
The platform offered the critical capabilities Attikes Diadromes needed:
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Advanced Analytics and Reporting: Robust analytics capabilities including automated traffic volume count, trend analysis, and detailed reporting with classification of the vehicles to understand traffic patterns and optimize management strategies
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Real-Time Updates and Alerts: Instant insights the traffic situation, congestion, and other critical events — crucial for proactive traffic management and heavy maintenance scheduling
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Customization and Flexibility: High degree of customization with adjustable settings, configurable modules, and tailored features to meet specific requirements
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Scalability and Integration: Compatibility with existing hardware, software, and data sources, plus ability to incorporate new technologies and expand functionalities
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Enhanced Accuracy: GoodVision’s area-of-interest feature allowed Attikes Diadromes to precisely focus on the relevant 30% of camera views, significantly increasing vehicle counting and classification accuracy.
Live dashboards show all necessary data dynamically changing in real-time, as specified by the user.
The Results: Faster Planning, Better Reporting, Lower Costs
Real-time data produced by GoodVision allowed Attikes Diadromes to optimise a range of traffic management activities:
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Tolling: Depending on the current traffic intensity, operators can adjust manual and automated toll booth allocation to accommodate the demand and prevent congestion from building up at toll plazas.
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Incident response: Live traffic monitoring helps identify “hot spots” — road sections with unexpectedly high traffic volume where collisions are more likely to occur.
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Congestion management: Real-time traffic counts, including vehicle categorization, help operators assess the current demand and quickly spot growing traffic intensity.
The original plan was to improve traffic counts and detect accidents. However, thanks to GoodVision Live Traffic, Attikes Diadromes did more than that.
60% Faster Highway Maintenance Planning
Real-time traffic data enabled precise selection of maintenance windows by comparing current conditions with historical patterns from holidays, elections, and seasonal variations. Operators can now make immediate decisions about closing one or two lanes based on live traffic volumes. As a result, lanes are closed for significantly shorter periods than before, dramatically improving scheduling accuracy and optimizing heavy maintenance operations.
From 15 Days to Real-Time Reporting
The shift in reporting capabilities was revolutionary:
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Weekly Reports: Reduced from 1.5 days to real-time
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Monthly Reports: Reduced from 15-20 days to real-time
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Traffic Analysis: Instant access to current and predictive data for daily/weekly traffic patterns
Additionally, Attikes Diadromes has integrated GoodVision with a newly developed Business Intelligence platform. Currently, the system is fed with real-time data from the toll system and VDS loops. Expanding the available data sources with GoodVision Live Traffic significantly improves its live reporting capabilities.
Live Traffic’s interface supports easy and fast navigation.
Up to 40% Cost Reduction via System Consolidation
System consolidation opportunities emerged as GoodVision could replace legacy traffic management software. Following several data validations and system improvements, it became possible to discontinue one of the old software systems and keep only the GoodVision application, bringing cost savings of around 40%.
As for interoperability, GoodVision connected seamlessly with other systems used by the TMC. However, following several data validations and system improvements, Attikes Diadromes concluded that it would be possible to discontinue one of the old traffic management software systems and use GoodVision exclusively. They estimate that the replacement would reduce costs by around 40%.
Key Operational Improvements
Camera-based monitoring eliminated the need for pavement-cutting loop installations, preserving road surface integrity and reducing long-term maintenance requirements.
Enhanced Key Performance Indicators:
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Improved response times for incident management
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Optimized hours of closed lanes through better planning
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Ability to predict estimated traffic volume from granular real-time data
Operators gained immediate visibility into traffic patterns, speeds, and volumes through familiar BI interfaces, enabling data-driven decisions for:
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Lane Closure Optimization: Real-time assessment of 5,000 vehicles/hour capacity across three lanes per direction
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Resource Allocation: Precise scheduling based on current traffic conditions
- Historical Analysis: Comparison capabilities for special events and seasonal patterns
About Attikes Diadromes
Attikes Diadromes, with the Ellaktor Group as the majority stakeholder, operated and maintained the Attiki Odos highway until October 2024 and now maintains most activities of this critical infrastructure. Attiki Odos connects Athens' airport, city center, intercity highways, and multimodal transportation hubs including the port of Piraeus and Athens Metro. The 70-kilometer highway features a unique flat-rate tolling system across 39 toll stations, with vehicles averaging 18 kilometers per journey and intersections approximately every 2 kilometers due to the dense urban environment.
What's Next? Expanding Applications and Integration
Dr. Ioannis Lefas continues to champion innovation across future PPPs and infrastructure projects, positioning Attikes Diadromes as a leader in traffic management technology adoption. Ioannis also sees utilization of GoodVision Live Traffic for use cases beyond land transportation. What could it be and what other new technologies could be utilized? We’ll leave that for another story.
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