Traffic Management

Overview

Key ITS applications for traffic and travel management are incident management, ramp metering, signal control, traveler information, and traffic surveillance.

Traffic surveillance provides the information needed for all of the other applications. Most metropolitan areas use loop detectors for traffic surveillance, and many use closed circuit television. Some use other types of surveillance, such as radar, lasers, or video image processing. The use of vehicles equipped with toll tags or global positioning systems as probes, to determine travel times, is growing in use.

Incident management may utilize all of the other traffic management functions, and it is common in large metropolitan areas and cities to bring these functions together in a traffic management center.

In some large cities, such as Los Angeles, traffic signal control is centralized in the traffic management center. In some situations, traffic responsive signals are used. These may be single signals or a group of interconnected signals. Ramp meters too may be operated independently or as a group.

Because much of the information on incidents is generated in traffic management centers these are logical locations for traveler information systems. Information may be provided directly to the public or to organizations who provide it to users through radio broadcast, the Internet, or other means. Several types of traveler information can be provided such as pre-trip information, en-route driver information, en-route transit information and route guidance.