Traffic Operations and Management

Simulation modeling is an increasingly popular and effective tool for analyzing transportation problems, which are not amendable to study by other means. We examine the need for parallel or distributed simulation approaches from the need for computational speed-ups, availability of options towards that, and then at the need to distribute the effort to develop network simulation contexts and datasets. After an overview of the general techniques for the distributed discrete-event simulation and previous efforts on the distributed traffic simulation, we present the general architecture of the...

The second phase of this project further investigates impacts to local traffic operations at intersections adjacent to signal preemption by SPRINTER commuter trains and comes up with countermeasures that not only minimize such impacts but also take into account the traffic signal coordination. An extended traffic signal optimization model has been developed to minimize overall traffic delays and the weighted width of “green band” along several coordinated traffic signals around the grade crossings. Based on the train’s movement detection at grade crossings and the waiting queue estimation...

This report presents the findings from the evaluation of a statewide initiative to retime traffic signals to produce more energy-efficient traffic flow: California's FuelEfficient Traffic Signal Management (FETSIM) Program. During the 11 years of the Program, over 160 cities and counties have retimed a total of 12,245 signals under grants from the FETSIM Program, in 334 projects. Improved timings have reduced vehicular delays by 14 percent in project areas; stops have been decre~sed by 13 percent. Overall travel times through these systems have dropped by 7 percent and fuel consumption has...

This report summarizes current practices in using archived operations data to better link decisions to transportationsystem performance. The joint research team of PATH and TTI investigated data archiving and performancemonitoring activities in selected locations, with a primary focus on the use of performance measures in improvingoperations. We first provide an overview of a traffic performance measures system and its components, then wesummarize the major findings for each system component. The major findings and conclusions of our research aresummarized below.