Traffic Management
Throughout its life SCOOT has been enhanced, particularly to offer an ever wider range of
traffic management tools. The traffic manager has many tools available within SCOOT to
manage traffic and meet local policy objectives such as: favouring particular routes or
movements, minimising network delay, delaying rat runs and gating traffic in certain areas
of the city. Because of its efficient control and modelling of current conditions, SCOOT
has much more scope to manage traffic than less efficient systems. For instance, buses can
be given extra priority without unacceptable disruption to other traffic.
SCOOT detectors are positioned where they will detect queues that are in danger of blocking upstream junctions and causing congestion to spread through the network. Within SCOOT, the traffic manager is able to prioritise where such problems should be minimised and SCOOT then automatically adjusts timings to manage the congestion.
Where local action is insufficient, the engineer can specify holding areas where queues
should be relocated to in critical conditions, gating traffic entering the urban area to
ensure efficient operation of critical, bottleneck links. SCOOT will continuously monitor
the sensitive area and smoothly impose restraint to hold traffic in the specified areas
when necessary.
SCOOT naturally reduces vehicle emissions by reducing delays and congestion within the network. In addition it can be set to adjust the optimisation of the signal timings to minimise emissions and also provide estimations of harmful emissions within the controlled area.
