The effectiveness of the implementation of the dynamic traffic control system SCOOT in the city of Nijmegen has been evaluated in a comparative study with the existing system of co-ordinated fixed-time control. Survey data have been analyzed with statistical methods. Hypotheses were formulated and tested using different statistics. The main findings on the SCOOT system are summarized as follows: (1) the Scoot system accurately reflects the traffic situation in all parts of the network, although some difficulties were experienced in optimizing one road; and (2) the effectiveness of SCOOT varied from location to location in the traffic network. In general, the SCOOT system performed better in the morning peak period and the fixed morning peak period and the fixed time control performed better in the evening peak period. The overall differences between the two systems were not statistically significant. The gating mechanism of the SCOOT system was more effective than the existing fixed-time gating-mechanism. The SCOOT system produced longer queues in front of the gating site, but there was no oversaturation anymore within the controlled network. (A)
Samenvatting