The Traffic Engineering Company (CET) is a municipal enterprise which is responsible for managing the urban traffic in the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region in Brazil. This paper presents the Sao Paulo Traffic Control Plan study, begun by CET in 1992. This study aimed to apply cost benefit analysis to derive the best control strategy for each junction of the city. The minimum cost-benefit ratio of 4 was used to trigger a change of the current strategy to control a junction. At that time, Sao Paulo had about 4000 signalised junctions, of which it was found that about 1500 should operate under real-time traffic control. The 1500 junctions were divided into five groups, each related to a city zone. The paper describes the survey areas used, outlines the study's methodology, and gives tables of the surveys' before-and-after results. A table also gives the estimated annual benefits in US$ from applying the real-time traffic control system to each of the three survey areas. Two particular streets were found to present the best performance from implementing the real-time control system. It was found that really exceptional gains from SCOOT were obtained there, partly because both roads connect two motorways and the city's Beltway where traffic is very variable.
Samenvatting