CALIFORNIA’PATH PROGRAM INSTITUTE OF TRANSPORTATION STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY Control Strategies and Route Guidance in Signal Controlled Networks

The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the State of California. This report does not constitute a standard, specification, or regulation. This paper has been mechanically scanned. Some errors may have been inadvertently introduced. Foreword The goals of the California PATH Program are to improve traffic safety, decrease traffic congestion and energy consumption, and improve air quality. It is evolutionary and voluntary. It is a cooperative venture of automakers, electronic companies, local, state and federal governments and universities. The purpose of the study described in this report is to provide a better understanding of the impacts of route guidance on urban arterials and networks controlled by traffic signals. Control and timing strategies to handle diverted traffic from the freeways to surface streets were developed and tested through simulation on carefully selected real-life networks. These strategies ranged from conventional fixed-time timing plans to real-time signal control. The results showed that for a small number of diverted vehicles, optimal timing plans favoring the diverted routes improved the performance of diverted traffic without significant adverse impacts to the rest of the network. Optimal timing plans for existing traffic patterns could not accommodate large diversion volumes on the network. Alternative approaches for generating signal settings developed in this study resulted in better network performance. Optimization of timing plans taking into account the diverted volumes significantly improved the traffic performance for both the local network and the diverted traffic. On-line control strategies produced the best results with significant benefits for traffic on surface streets.