Development and Evaluation of a Control System for Regional Traffic Management

Traffic congestion is a worsening problem in metropolitan areas which will require integrated regional traffic control systems to improve traffic conditions. This paper presents a regional traffic control system which can detect incident conditions and provide integrated traffic management during nonrecurrent congestion events. The system combines advanced artificial intelligence techniques with a traffic performance model based on HCM equations. Preliminary evaluation of the control system using traffic microsimulation demonstrates that it has the potential to improve system conditions during traffic incidents. In addition, several enhancements were identified which will make the system more robust in a real traffic control setting. An assessment of the control system elements indicates that there are no substantial technical barriers in implementing this system in a large traffic network.