Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Analysis of Adaptive Traffic Control Systems Design of a Decision Support System for Better Choices

Abstract

Luca Studer, Misagh Ketabdari and Giovanna Marchionni

Near half of the world population lives in cities. For many years big cities have faced the difficulties caused by junctions. Junctions and congestion are the cause of many other problems, like air pollution, time waste, delays, increased average trip time, decreased average cruise speed, increased fuel consumption and many others. These important issues cost a lot to governments in terms of both time and money. Cities suffer from the well-known problem of fixed-time planning for traffic signals at intersections. In this paper the authors went through these problems and discussed about the difficulties of fixed-time plan traffic lights and their solutions. Adaptive traffic control systems are one of the solutions which are exactly opposite to fixed-time plans. Four different adaptive traffic control systems will be discussed. Each of them has unique characteristics that make it worthy to compare. The general architecture of these systems is based on a similar concept, but there is a great number of general and detailed differences that makes them interesting to compare. By making a deep comparison between these systems, which is one of the outputs of this research, governments and the authorities in charge can have an appropriate reference to look for their benefits and choose an adaptive traffic control system to apply to their networks.