Traffic control measures aim at improving traffic conditions or minimizing externalities caused by road traffic. These measures are usually optimized for one specific goal (e.g. minimizing total time spent) and one specific situation (e.g. peak-hour traffic) on a specific part of the network. This means that for other goals, situations or parts of the network conditions might decline due to this measure. Integrated Network Management (INM) is focussed on coordinating traffic measures from a network perspective to prevent negative effects of isolated measures and strive for one common objective.
In the light of INM this thesis focuses on the integration of traffic lights and navigation devices in an urban network. Floating car data from navigation devices is assumed to give more accurate information about the current state of the network and with this information a controller can choose the best control strategy to control the traffic lights in the network. Dynamic route guidance can be used as a means to optimize the functioning of this strategy. The research objective is to design this controller.
The controller will be tested in a simulation study on the road network around the RAI in Amsterdam. It is assumed that during events the traffic conditions in the network are substantially different from normal situations and a different control strategy will prove to be beneficial. In the simulation study the effectiveness and applicability of the controller is tested, as well as the dependency on high penetration rates of vehicles equipped with connected navigation devices.