Urban Traffic Control

Austroads Home Page This is a link to the website of the Association of Australian Traffic and Road Authorities. This body discuss standards about all aspects of road construction, traffic management, signalling system and other related items. This body also conducts research for and on behalf of the road authorities that is used to formulate policies used by these authorities. This is an area of interest for all traffic signal control systems as far as the Australian context is concerned.

SCATS is an Australian developed adaptive Urban Traffic Control system that has been in use since the late 1970's in Sydney and has now been deployed in over 70 cities around the world. Recognised for its adaptive nature to make sure that traffic is moved in the most efficient manner possible given the constraint of limited capacity road in highly urbanised cities such as Sydney, Australia. SCATS - Sydney Co-ordinated Adaptive Traffic System The link to the SCATS product site gives the reader a background in how it works and how it integrates with Public Transport systems with dedicated bus prioritisation corridors. SCATS developed its "view" of traffic by gathering vehicle count data in real time and would form a view where the majority of "demand" for time would be. SCATS then executes changes to each intersection's "cycle time" to ensure that a little more time is given to roads where the vehicle count is consistently greatest until it is reduce

To Tame Traffic, Go With The Flow - Science News This article published in ScienceNews goes a long way to suggesting that the method of flow control used by the SCATS Urban Traffic Control system which live by the mantra: "The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. " and this seems to give the best results given the variability of demand and the "ebb and flow" of traffic in different directions in the morning and afternoon peaks which is exactly how the SCATS Urban Traffic Control system works. ATC distributes SCATS and has long championed this type of adaptive traffic management around the world when cities have wanted to address city traffic congestion. Info on the SCATS system is available on ATC's SCATS product website and the SCATS website .

Victoria | Transport Committee This link is to a series of presentations on Road Safety Advancements by VicRoads and was facilitated by the victorian chapter of Engineers Australia It is an excellent snapshot of where multiple authorities including traffic, police, forensic, rail and infrastructure departments have collaborated to reducing the road and pedestrian tolls with some encouraging results.

Urban Traffic Controlis the science and engineering behind adaptively moving traffic in the most efficient manner based on the degree of saturation (the amount of time vehicles spend on a lane traffic loop). There are various systems such as SCATS ( www.scats.com.au ) and SCOOT, ITACA and more. One of the more advanced and used such UTC systems is that developed by the Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW in Sydney, Australia. The system uses advanced queuing theory alogorithms to adapt in real time the signal phase times to ensure that the most amount of road traffic is moved without stifling side or lesser used road traffic. The SCATS system receives road traffic vehicle counts from Traffic Signal Controllers located at each intersection and then it sends the most optimal times the phases should be running. In this way, coordination across many intersections may be achieved resulting in smoother traffic flow in highly urban city centres.