Comparison by simulation of different approaches to the urban traffic control

As the urban traffic volumes reach their daily peak values, the surface traffic in modern cities suffers from frequent breakdowns and traffic jams. One of possibilities that could mitigate the problem is the deployment of smarter automatic systems of urban traffic control. Our paper demonstrates a development version of such a system. The system is based on adaptive feedback control approach. It makes use of filtering techniques to account for measurement imperfections and implements the rolling horizon method for optimal signal control. We compare the performance of the proposed system with two typical control approaches - pre-timed (or fixed) control, and traffic actuated (or dynamic) control. Different scenarios will be compared, including rapid changes in traffic volumes and reactions to incidents. The comparison is carried out using our demonstrator tool, based on TSS Aimsun micro-simulator. In order to keep the calibrated simulation as close to reality as possible, in the comparison runs we use real dense input volume measurements and simulate also the behavior of intersection controllers.