In 2021, York became the first UK city to deploy real-time traffic modelling within its traffic management operations. The main benefit of this deployment was to fuse together live data from the city’s assets such as: timings from signals connected to UTC; and traffic flow detection from loops and cameras, with city-wide floating vehicle data and a transport model to provide an accurate prediction of current and near-future traffic conditions. This information allows the city to be proactive in its approach to traffic management.
In 2024, the city has implemented a real-world pilot to automatically simulate alternative signal plans within the real-time model, and to send recommendations to the network management officers to implement via the UTC. The combination of automated simulations – triggered by user-defined thresholds and results from the near-future traffic predictions – and implementation of the plans recommended using a customisable scoring system, resulted in traffic delay reductions of up to 8% in the peaks.
In our paper and presentation, we explain the architecture of the system, present the results of the switch-on / switch-off test, and summarise the benefits and lessons learned from the pilot. We also consider the options and potential benefits for city-wide rollout of such an approach.