Within the Research & Development Centre Transport & Traffic Telematics of CMG, the concept of Distributed Traffic Control (DTC) has been developed. This concept builds upon the trend of increasing intelligence in the vehicle, infrastructure (including communication and positioning systems) and the opportunities this offers to the vehicle computer to give real time route and travel information to the driver and the Driver Support Systems. At the same time this information gathered by the (very) local Traffic Control Centre is being used to support and manage traffic flows in a certain geographical area (operational level: intersection). In order to do this in a larger area a number of the same local traffic control centres are interconnected to each other and form a network. The interconnected DTC's allow for traffic management not only for their own controlled area (tactical level) but over the concatenated area's of the interconnected DTC's, e.g. flow control around a city (tactical level), minimising congestion and maximising throughput. Several DTC networks can be interconnected to cover a nationwide highway system (strategic level). The concept also is applicable in very local situations like the integration of parking places and the interconnecting infrastructure, and intelligent information and access systems for cities. In this paper the concept of Distributed Traffic Control is explained, followed by a brief description of the developments in the respective areas (automotive, infrastructure and society). Hereafter the main characteristics are highlighted and finally descriptions of the possible application areas as stated before are given.
Abstract