EMERGENCY VEHICLE SIGNAL PREEMPTION SYSTEM FOR TIRUCHIRAPPALLI CITY HAVING HETEROGENEOUS TRAFFIC CONDITION

摘要

Good transportation system operation allows accessibility and mobility of people and goods, and economic productivity at the local and national levels. In case of emergencies, good transportation system operations are even more essential to ensure safe, continuous movement of people and goods as well as support response and recovery operations. Therefore, it becomes important to ensure the operation and integrity of the transportation system and enhance its ability to provide service in the event of an emergency through strategic planning and active management. An important step toward this direction is Emergency vehicle (Ambulance, fire trucks and police vehicles) operation. Emergency vehicle(EV) operation has a very important role to play in saving lives and reducing property damage during emergency. In order to reduce the response time and the impact of EV operation on general traffic, research is underway around the world to find solutions. The EV signal preemption (EVSP) at intersection is one of the most attractive option in utilizing roadway capacity and speeding the movements of emergency vehicles. The use of traffic signal preemption is becoming more common in light of the recent emphasis on incident management and emergency evacuation. The study overlooks on the need for development of low cost Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) for Indian environment, with the limelight on Tiruchirappalli city as the study area. The data comprising of traffic volume, spot speed and geometric variables were collected for four signalized intersections. The proposed method combines Entry strategy ( Normal signal system to EVSP system) and Exit strategy ( EVSP system to normal signal system), so that traffic queues at the intersections on a given emergency route can be cleared in advance for an emergency vehicle, while minimizing delay because of unnecessary preemption. The proposed strategy was simulated in a traffic network using a microscopic simulation model USING Vissim Software, which was calibrated with the traffic data collected from the network. The performance of the proposed preemption was compared with existing system. ITS tool has been proposed to provide a better measure of traffic management to reduce congestion in Tiruchirappalli city.