On-field experiment of the traffic-responsive co-ordinated control strategy CRONOS-2 for under- and over-saturated traffic

Recurrent road traffic congestion in large cities is a blight that wastes a great deal of time and increases greenhouse gas emissions, fuel consumption, noise and stress. One way of combating such congestion is traffic control by means of traffic signals. The role of traffic signals is to temporally separate the different traffic flows at each intersection and alternately distribute the right of way with appropriate time durations. The real-time traffic control systems that have been developed during the three last decades include CRONOS-2 which has several advantages under congested situations, in particular, its capacity to control several intersections in a centralized way. A real-site trial has been performed on a zone consisting of five adjacent intersections. The results show significant benefits for total delay in the zone during congestion compared to the usual control strategy for this zone. These results vary for each intersection considered on its own. This trial has demonstrated the effectiveness of this system in complex and constrained traffic situations.