The development of area wide traffic management scenarios

Abstract

Traffic management in cities with congestion is a big challenge with still unused opportunities. Intersection control is a corner stone but this should be done in an area-wide context. The dominant traffic process on urban roads is the traffic flow on the intersections. Spill back is a most important cause of malfunctioning networks. The methodology described in this paper gives a structured approach to develop scenarios for dynamic traffic management. The detection of spillback can be done by the analysis of probe vehicle data. Using the conflicts at the intersections as the basic elements of the network capacity analysis and the basis of traffic control, this paper develops a method to define control scenarios by evaluation and adaptation of local traffic control, buffering and metering strategies and rerouting. To support the task of traffic managers, the monitoring, traffic management scenarios and evaluation by simulation are integrated in a decision support system, iTides. This methodology is applied in a network in the CBD of Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in P.R. China.