Urban/freeway traffic control

A computer program has been developed to compute the trajectories of vehicles and platoons of vehicles as they move through an urban street network and on a freeway. It can be used to generate traffic patterns and determine performance measures for a wide variety of control strategies and is a new tool for the evaluation and design of candidate traffic control policies. SCOT (Simulation of COrridor Traffic) is a computer program designed to simulate traffic flow within an urban freeway corridor. It contains two basic algorithms: one for the movement of platoons on a freeway and the other for the movement of individual vehicles on the freeway ramps, service roads, major arterials and city streets. These models have been interfaced so the system-wide effect of a proposed control policy may be assessed. A study was made using the urban simulation model of SCOT to design and evaluate a sequence of traffic signal schedules for a section of a major arterial in Boston and the results are discussed in this report. Current studies include the application of SCOT to traffic responsive control systems for the evaluation of a variety of freeway ramp metering and bus priority strategies.