Siemens Mobility project uses rerouting to improve air quality in Munich

Up to 40% of drivers are willing to help reduce air pollution when provided with alternative routes on ThinxNet’s Ryd platform, says Siemens Mobility. The partners worked with air quality specialist Hawa Dawa in a four-week project in Munich to prove that intelligent traffic control can help cities become more sustainable. Siemens says initial results for more than 1,600 drivers in the German city showed savings of 83 kg of carbon dioxide and 114 g of nitrogen oxide as well as a reduction of 633km driven
February 25, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
Up to 40% of drivers are willing to help reduce air pollution when provided with alternative routes on ThinxNet’s Ryd platform, says 120 Siemens Mobility.


The partners worked with air quality specialist Hawa Dawa in a four-week project in Munich to prove that intelligent traffic control can help cities become more sustainable.

Siemens says initial results for more than 1,600 drivers in the German city showed savings of 83 kg of carbon dioxide and 114 g of nitrogen oxide as well as a reduction of 633km driven.

If the programme were to be scaled to 20,000 drivers, the savings would be the equivalent to planting more than one acre of forested land, the company suggests.

Hawa provided pollution forecasts to Siemens’ ITS digital lab in Munich, where data scientists and traffic management experts analysed the data with anonymised trip data from the smart car platform Ryd to predict individual routes and suggest ‘green’ alternatives. These routes were then provided to Ryd users via an app before they started their journeys.

Ryd users can use the app to receive information on car’s health such as fuel consumption, battery life and fuel in level in the engine.  

Drivers were incentivised to use alternative routes by participating in a competition in which they received Amazon vouchers.

Michael Peter, CEO of Siemens Mobility, says shaping connected mobility will improve the efficiency of transportation and its impact on the environment.

Karim Tarraf, Hawa Dawa’s CEO, says: “We believe eco-routing at the individual vehicle level has extremely high potential as a policy option in tackling unacceptable levels of traffic-related air pollution in cities.”

Related Content

  • November 17, 2014
    Air quality tops transportation agendas
    Colin Sowman catches up on some of the latest research around outdoor pollution and looks at options available to authorities in areas of poor air quality. Iair quality hasn’t already reached the top of the agenda in transportation department meetings in your area, it probably soon will with national, trans-national and even global bodies calling for authorities to reduce pollution levels.
    Read More
  • October 25, 2018
    Uber to implement clean air fee for all London trips
    Uber will introduce a fee of 15p per mile for all trips booked via its app in London to help its drivers purchase an electric vehicle (EV). The surcharge will be introduced in early 2019. Uber says drivers working 40 hours per week for two years could receive around £3,000 of support towards the purchase of an EV. The initiative is part of Uber’s Clean Air Plan in which the company expects to raise more than £200 million in the next few years to support the switch to electric. Uber estimates tha
    Read More
  • July 3, 2020
    Siemens launches Zephyr air monitoring
    Integrated with traffic management systems, it measures a range of pollutants
    Read More
  • January 25, 2018
    Manchester seeks smart but not selective transport solutions
    Smarter transport relies on better communications both with travellers and between transport providers. Andrew Williams reports. Inrix’s prediction that the cost of traffic congestion will rise by 63% to £21bn per year by 2030 clearly illustrates that, in addition to the ongoing inconvenience and inefficiency, ongoing gridlock is a significant drain on the economy. It is against this backdrop that a Cisco-led consortium has launched CitySpire, a smart transport programme that uses location-based services a
    Read More

Highlighted Content