Acceleration Noise as a Measure of Effectiveness in the Operation of Traffic Control System

Abstract

Acceleration Noise measures the disutility associated with successive decelerations and accelerations in a signalized environment. It provides an indication of the smoothness of traffic flow. As such it constitutes a generalization of the number-of-stops concept and is suitable to replace it as an additive measure-of-effectiveness for designing and evaluating the operation of traffic control systems. This report develops models for calculating the acceleration noise incurred by a platoon of vehicles travelling along a signal-controlled traffic link. Several flow patterns are analyzed: discrete arrivals, uniformcontinuous arrivals and variable-continuous arrivals. A computer program and test results are described. The models can be easily extended for use in signal- controlled networks.