EXTENDING THE CAPABILITIES OF SIGNALISED INTERSECTIONS

In recent years, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies have received wide publicity. Two of these are automated driving systems on freeways and nose-to-rear collision avoidance technologies. Both are well-known applications and one area where these systems could be applied is to the movement of vehicles through signalised intersections. This paper proposes the Simple Platoon Advancement (SPA) model which describes a system where the roadway infrastructure controls vehicle progression through a single, isolated, signalised junction. The objective is to speed the passage of vehicles from a stationary queue through the junction without resorting to a greater rate of acceleration than is used by today's drivers. Progression is achieved by the queue being moved as a single unit (a technologically-connected platoon) with instant start on green and uniform acceleration. A platoon dispersion mechanism is proposed that will allow the control of the vehicles to be safely transferred from the infrastructure to the driver of each vehicle. The description in this paper only considers light vehicles. The paper then discusses some features of an exponential model of queue discharge characteristics developed from extensive observations of eleven signalised intersections in Sydney and Melbourne from 1991-99.