From discussions with road/transport authorities throughout this project, there is strong agreement that a new generation of signal controllers should be developed locally. The motivation came from the need to have a controller that provides efficient signal operation, is cost-effective and has a modular, scaleable and open architecture. The literature review has confirmed that the development of the specification for the advanced transportation controller (ATC) architecture was completed in September 2006 in the US and Verkehrs-Systeme in Switzerland has reported the pilot-testing of its VS-PLUS control algorithm in such an architecture. Local road/transport authorities can learn from the ATC development and move on from the current platform of the RTA TSC4/TRAFF, making use of years of experience in developing a reliable controller with high safety integrity. Two new projects are recommended for future work. The first project aims to convert the functional requirements developed from this project into the functional specifications of a new controller with further Austroads funding. The specification of safety functional requirements will also be developed in this project. The second project is to streamline the preparation of a controller personality, and could be funded by road/transport authorities as a separate, parallel project to the new Austroads project. (Author/publisher)
Abstract