BALANCE-a European field trial

New perceptions of the effects of traffic in cities have influenced developments in the area of signal control. Apart from car traffic the needs of the environment, of public transport users, pedestrians and others, have to be considered and balanced. This paper refers to one of these developments, partly funded by the EU, which involves trials in several cities. The adaptive signal control method BALANCE, designed in Germany at the Technical University of Munich, takes account of the new requirements and was developed with consideration of the experience available from the operation of various adaptive control methods over the last two decades. The objectives of BALANCE are to integrate signal control into the management of the whole road transport network and especially to help traffic authorities to exercise policies which assist multimodal network operations, not just cars. First field trials were performed in Munich in the framework of the DRIVE/ATT program and showed significant benefits for both car traffic and public transport when comparing BALANCE with vehicle actuated control. The method has now been further improved and is being tested in four European cities to demonstrate its applicability to different European environments and its interoperability with various control platforms. This paper focuses on objectives and results to date.