The M-40 autoroute is a 61 kilometre ring road around Madrid, and is strategically important because of its role both in the movements of urban, inter-city and inter-community traffic as a great distributor of radial and transversal traffic. One attentive observation about the ring-road allows us to conclude that the M-40 does not present the recurrent characteristics of seasonal variation or hourly imbalance (rush hour) other than the change in levels of intensity, depending on the time of day or on week-ends. Therefore, no lane control policies or access restrictions have been established. Instead, the option has been a purely computerized channelling system that allows for the optimization of the road through the management of routes, depending on the circumstances of the moment. This paper will present the implementation of the intelligent management system of dynamic signals installed along the ring-road by the General Traffic Bureau, based on a detection and traffic measurement sub-system and some incident-detecting algorithm and automatic recommendations for alternative routes. (A)
Abstract