On modifications to the traffic-responsive urban control method

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The current work focuses on enhancements to an existing traffic control system known as Traffic-responsive Urban Control (TUC). Initially designed for corridor networks, TUC maintains synchronized traffic lights that prioritize vehicles on main routes, minimizing stops at successive intersections and reducing delays. This is achieved by adjusting the Offset parameter, which enhances driver comfort. The investigation proposes an extension to TUC, enabling it to manage more complex meshed networks, allowing secondary intersecting routes to benefit from synchronization. Additionally, the method for adjusting Offsets is improved to consider the operational impacts of these changes. TUC primarily relies on current traffic queue length data. To complement these modifications, a new Queue Estimator/Predictor is introduced, utilizing a macroscopic traffic model to enhance traffic queue predictions. The effectiveness of these developments is evaluated through simulations of a real network over an entire day. The results are compared not only to TUC’s original formulation but also to a newly developed Adaptive Traffic Control System (ATCS) prototype. Findings indicate that the proposed enhancements positively impacted TUC’s operation, although the improvements were not as significant as anticipated.