The evolution of urban traffic control: changing policy and technology

Abstract

The history of urban traffic control (UTC) throughout the past century has been a continued race to keep pace with ever more complex policy objectives and consistently increasing vehicle demand. Many benefits can be observed from an efficient urban traffic control system, such as reduced congestion, increased economic efficiency and improved road safety and air quality.There have been significant advances in vehicle detection and communications technologies which have enabled a series of step changes in the capabilities of UTC systems, from early (fixed time) signal plans to modern integrated systems.A variety of UTC systems have been implemented throughout the world, each with individual strengths and weaknesses; this paper seeks to compare the leading commercial systems (and some less well known systems) to highlight the key characteristics and differences before assessing whether the current UTC systems are capable of meeting modern transport policy obligations and desires. This paper then moves on to consider current and future transport policy and the technological landscape in which UTC will need to operate over the coming decades, where technological advancements are expected to move UTC from an era of limited data availability to an era of data abundance.

Empirical modelling of the relationship between bus and car speeds on signalised urban networks

“…Bluetooth technology has been described in literature as an effective method for travel time estimation (Kieu, Bhaskar, and Chung 2012;Tsubota et al 2011;Hamilton et al 2012). Here, travel time, TT(m,u,d), of a Bluetooth MAC-ID, m, observation at upstream, u, and downstream, d, intersections is defining as the difference of the time when the device is observed at downstream, T(m,d), and upstream, T(m,u), intersections: TT ðm; u; dÞ ¼ T ðm; dÞ À T ðm; uÞ ð 1Þ…”

Further study on extended back-pressure traffic signal control algorithm

“…Remark 2.1: According to traffic engineering, it is beneficial if a traffic signal control algorithm can minimize delay at low traffic flows while maximize capacity at high traffic flows [2]. For each intersection n ∈ N , the allocation scheme (6) becomes a distribution determined by {w (i) n (t)} as δ n (t) approaches 0; it gives the largest possible green time, i.e., C − R n , to the stage with largest pressure as δ n (t) goes to ∞.…”

Multi-criteria Decision Making for Locating Multimodal Transfer Nodes in Passenger Transport Systems

“…The structure and capacity of the urban transportation network directly impacts the level of accessibility, or the ease of getting from one place to another, within a city [1,2,3]. As highlighted by studies in the literature [1,4,5,6], "maximising accessibility, along with minimising travel and environmental impacts and reducing social inequities, has became an important agenda in urban transportation planning".…”