Management of traffic using control and other measures: MUSIC

For many years traffic signals in urban areas have been used to control road networks, primarily to minimise the total delay to vehicles. Traffic patterns have generally been assumed to be fixed and little or no account has been taken of route choice. In recent years, local bus priority measures have been introduced which also supposed that the traffic patterns were fixed and also did not take account of route choice. More recently gating strategies have been introduced to protect more sensitive areas by controlling traffic patterns but again the effects of rerouting have not been taken into account. The aim of the MUSIC project is to demonstrate that by managing and optimising the overall performance of the network using new, cost effective, traffic control strategies it will be possible to: reduce congestion; improve the efficiency of public transport; and influence mode choice. This will be achieved by using the MUSIC software package which calculates area-wide traffic signal timings