ANALYSES ON DATA COLLECTED BY TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR OBTAINING MORE SMOOTH TRAFFIC FLOW

Traffic management systems in Kanagawa Prefecture have been making great strides in realizing safe, smooth traffic in Kanagawa by means of collecting traffic information through various roadside sensors, controlling local traffic signals responsively to road congested conditions, and providing motorists with these traffic conditions effectively. However, owing to the circumstance surrounding the traffic field year after year, there exists, in fact, chronic traffic jams not yet solved by the traffic management systems. So, the method of dealing with these congested situations becomes a heavy problem for those who operate traffic management systems. To deal with this problem, it is not adequate to resort to temporary expedients, but to clarify causes involved in each traffic congestion through accurately analyzing the phenomena, and to devise a means to reduce the traffic congestion. At the same time, it is necessary to clarify the effectiveness of and the problems induced from these means. In this paper, the author intends to describe how to analyze a variety of traffic conditions gathered by current traffic management systems, as well as how to extract problems and devise the means to make the traffic smoother than ever.