Abstract:
Traffic engineering covers a broad range of engineering applications with a common focus: the
nations’ system of highways and streets. Often defined as nation’s “life blood circulation
system”, this important part of national infrastructure supports the inter- and intra-city
movement of both people and goods. Thus transportation system plays a very important in
every aspect of society. Traffic engineering involves a variety of engineering and management
skills including planning, management, design, construction, operational control, maintenance
and system optimization. Congestion is one of the major problems encountered by the traffic
engineers. While the principal goal of a traffic engineer remains the provision of a safe system
of road and highway traffic, the design construction, operational control or system optimization
may be employed to relieve congestion. This would increase safety and cause reduction in the
wastage of fuel and money. Optimization is considered to be an extremely feasible technique
particularly for third world countries which may not be able to allocate huge funds required for
capacity enhancing infrastructure. System optimization is done to control and coordinate traffic
signals for arterials or road networks with an aim to reduce congestion. Signal optimization is
achieved by altering the cycle lengths of different approaches of intersections which lie within a
network considered for reduction of congestion. The system optimization also includes
optimizing the intersection offsets which induces a phenomenon in which a series of traffic
lights are coordinated to allow continuous traffic flow over several intersections in one main
direction. This concept is known as the Green Wave concept. System optimization is being
widely used throughout the world as it a very cost effective measure for congestion reduction
and in most cases does not require the addition of new infrastructure. The results of this project
show that by using optimization techniques we can reduce delay and improve the level of
service a signalized intersections
