A traffic management system for Beijing

Abstract

Paper presented at the 28th Annual Southern African Transport Conference 6 - 9 July 2009 "Sustainable Transport", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

The paper describes the Decision Support System (DSS) that was developed as part of the Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) of the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau (BTMB) to better manage vehicular traffic on the road network in Beijing. The system was designed, supplied and is being installed in Beijing. The DSS comprises the following products and services: A Decision Support System for traffic planning, traffic control design & optimisation and traffic management. This system will eventually cover the total City of Beijing within and including the 4th Ring road and be implemented. It will become fully operational after the initial (pilot) system test proves to be successful; The initial implementation of the integrated network traffic control system was for a confined area in the north of Beijing including the area where most of the venues used for the Olympic Games are situated. The development of the DSS has been completed and the system is currently being used by the BTMB to generate optimum traffic response plans based on traffic events taken from the Bureau's event data log. With the help of the DSS, coordinated traffic management strategies and incident response measures can now be implemented for the Beijing road network. For instance, the control of signalized intersections along arterial roads can be harmonized with traffic diversion schemes implemented on the City's ring road network. As a result, the Beijing traffic conditions can be improved through the application of effective incident management and route guidance techniques.