Development and application of on-line strategies for optimal intersection control : phase II : off-line evaluation of control strategies and development of a live laboratory

This project evaluates various intersection control strategies in a simulated environment and also helped establish a live laboratory for use in future testing of new control strategies. The report reviews major intersection control strategies, including the state-of-the-art strategies with adaptive and on-line timing generation features. In addition, it details simulation results for the OPAC control strategy.. The NETSIM simulator created the simulation environment for a test network that included part of downtown Minneapolis. Comparison results indicate that OPAC performs best with low-traffic demands, and pretimed control was the most effective during peak periods when traffic demand reached capacity.

In conjunction with this project, Minneapolis city traffic engineers installed a machine-vision video detection system at a live intersection laboratory. Located at Franklin and Lyndale Avenues, the test site will help researchers evaluate new control strategies before full-scale implementation in later phases of this research.