The MUSIC Project: Urban Traffic Control for Traffic Demand Management

Urban traffic control (UTC) is a cheap, readily available, tool that is underused for travel demand management. While it has long been understood that traffic is likely to re-route in response to signal settings, the goal of a UTC system is still often seen as “get the vehicle through the junction as quickly as possible”. The main exception is vehicle actuated signals, which attempt to speed journeys for public transport by arranging a green-wave to transponder equipped vehicles. There is, however, considerable potential in making use of the fact that vehicles are likely to re-route in response to UTC, particularly as a subtle tool for traffic demand management. The MUSIC (Management of traffic USIng Control) project is a European Union funded project, which attempts to demonstrate some of this potential using on-site demonstrations. In three cities, network models have been used to create fixed-time signal settings, which attempt to meet the traffic demand management goals of the city authorities. The three sites chosen were: York, where bus-actuated pre-signals are used both to “gate” traffic and also to give priority to buses; Porto, where a city-wide signal-setting policy is designed to reduce congestion to cars, favour well-used public transport routes and discourage cars from entering “pedestrian sensitive” areas; and Thessaloniki, where a city wide signal-setting policy is designed to reduce congestion to cars while favouring the mostused public transport routes. This paper reports on the project, concentrating on the modelling techniques used to produce the signal-setting plans but also reporting some initial encouraging results from the demonstration sites.