Route Control-Simulation Experiments

The paper investigates the potential savings in delay likely to result from the use of route control techniques in an urban network of streets where the dominant control mechanism is traffic signal control. The distinction is drawn between user-and system-optimizing solutions to the minimum journey time problem with trip end constraints. Three networks and five origin-destination flow patterns are used in simulation experiments using a stochastic, semi-macroscopic traffic model, a partial loading assignment model and a tree-building signal optimisation algorithm. The results of these experiments show that substantial savings in average total journey time (between 0 and 25%) could be obtained by the use of route control rather than area traffic control alone.