Urban Traffic Control

A new upcoming ITS Standard being implemented in European vehicles starting on 2014 - HeERO eCall Czech pilot - YouTube .

Version 6.9 of SCATS has recently been released by the Roads and Maritime Services Authority of NSW, Australia with a new set of features aimed at ensuring that Traffic Management Centres that use SCATS have continued of control of their road network by having SCATS capable of switching from a primary server to a backup server very quickly. SCATS Failover Redundancy This is known as the SCATS High Availaibility topology and is available on this version running on an MS SQL Server Database. This high availability capability can be performed on different LAN/WAN topologies and using SAN (Storage Area Network) systems. So all the intersections that are connected to the main SCATS Regional Computers can be accessed and controlled by a second set of SCATS Regional Computers (clearly not at the same time) in the event of failover to the backup SCATS system with no interruption of visibility. SCATS Failover Block Diagram In the field the situation changes and SCATS allows for t

This is an example of maybe how not to put up traffic signals, however, given its location and application (road/peds/trams) it may be inevitable.

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 .