As part of the DfT Horizons project a study has been undertaken of the potential benefits of cooperation between intelligent vehicles and traffic signal control using vehicle – infrastructure communications. Potentially much information on the behaviour of vehicles and the condition of the highway, from in-vehicle sensors, could be passed to the traffic signal control logic. The objective was to consider the potential benefits to the infrastructure to inform DfT policy before in-vehicle developments define what information may be available. Costs of strategies have been estimated, but are highly dependent on whether or not they can be hosted on platforms that will be implemented primarily for other purposes. Uses of probe vehicle information appear promising, particularly when the probe data can replace the need for infrastructure based sensors. Large safety benefits are estimated for automatic enforcement of behaviour at traffic signals, or for interacting with the vehicle controls to force obedience to the signals, but there would be considerable problems of political acceptability of such systems. It is recommended that the requirements for cooperative traffic signal control are embedded into related developments of in-vehicle telematics platforms, floating-car data gathering systems etc, rather than invest in a dedicated capability. In this way it should be possible to phase-in enhancements as the penetration of suitably equipped vehicles reaches levels at which correct operation of these advanced control systems is possible. (Author/publisher)
Abstract