In 2016, after the golden decade of intelligent transportation construction, how to make expensive equipment play its due role? The Ministry of Public Security has deployed and promoted the "industrialization and industrialization" work. It may be due to insufficient technical support. The document actively encourages the introduction of society Chemical professional organizations provide signal timing services.
further clarified in the 2017 "Action Plan for Improving the Unblocked Urban Road Traffic Civilization" that professional signal timing services are taken as an important assessment indicator.
and even the "Guiding Opinions on Further Strengthening the Application of Urban Road Traffic Signal Control" issued on October 23, 2020, give specific guidance on how to carry out this work.
It should be said that the Ministry of Public Security’s requirements for signal timing professional services are gradually strengthened, which has also played a significant role in the development of signal timing professionalism, but there are still some difficulties that require us to continue to improve. And overcome.
Dilemma 1. The role of signal control is not fully realized. The original purpose of
signal control is to ensure safety. Today, when traffic jams are common, alleviate traffic jams and release the traffic capacity that should be available at intersections. Signal control A very important role. In fact, more importantly, signal linkage and coordinated control is an important means to revitalize the overall road network resources, rationally allocate traffic flow, and improve travel efficiency. This means is often not recognized. Many places have spent 50,000 or 60,000 yuan for smart phones. , But it only takes four to five thousand yuan to realize the function of a single point signal.
In practice, it is found that after the system's professional signal optimization, the number of stops, travel time and traffic congestion alleviation can be increased by at least 15-20%. If the same effect is compared with extensive road construction, the input-output ratio is no In comparison, it is a pity that this potential resource has not been exploited.
Dilemma 2: The idea of focusing on construction and despising the application of effects still exists.
may exist in many industries. Some conservative government decision-makers feel that buying some equipment and repairing some roads are real investment and make a plan. , Design, program optimization, and technical services appear to be illusory, and the investment is not worth it. Facts have proved that the waste of investment caused by inadequate planning and design is far greater than the cost of planning and design itself. Signal system construction is also like this. Equipment construction is the foundation and timing service is the application. Both are indispensable, and the ultimate goal should be It is the actual effect, not the scale of the equipment.
In addition, it is the first time for socialized professional services in some places. How to get everyone's common recognition from the program also requires a unified thinking and understanding and accumulation of certain practical experience.
Dilemma 3. Excessive dependence on the role of the equipment itself
has mentioned this problem in many places. Since we have introduced an advanced adaptive system, the signal will be automatically timed, so why do we need to provide professional timing services? First of all, even if it is all adaptive, it also requires a professional solution; secondly, adaptive is only suitable for some points, not all adaptive is good; the most important is limited by objective conditions, the effect of adaptive There is often a big gap between what is expected.
Of course, there are still some decision-makers who feel that Green Wave is not "tall" enough. This is still a misunderstanding. Green wave is just a method of coordinated control. Others include at least congestion coordinated control, speed control, anti-overflow control, path coordination, intersection group coordination, area coordination, etc. The opposite is single-point control. If you regard traffic optimization as a battle, equipment is a weapon, a single point is a single soldier, and coordination is the formation that best reflects the tactical level. The formation can only be continuously improved, and for each basic formation, we can only talk about whether it is suitable for the current specific environment.
Dilemma 4. There is a certain degree of difficulty in building a truly professional organization team. Although the entire industry feels like mushrooms are springing up, in fact, there are still very few truly professional organizations. There are many aspects that need to be considered in signal optimization. For the optimization team, at least each team needs to understand traffic equipment, signal timing, traffic organization, road facilities, channelization design, and media promotion. The knowledge and skills of several subjects. The important thing is that the knowledge reserves in this area are far from enough. Years of front-line experience and practical skills are precisely the most terrible. These requirements have led to the formation of a service team, but it is not easy to form a professional team.
In addition, the performance of traffic problems is always ever-changing, and the problems that need to be solved are often old and difficult problems. To solve this problem requiresIt requires a team to work together. From an operational point of view, if the input and output are matched, there are more service locations, the market demand is more extensive, and the accumulation of needs to support development, which is what we commonly call "more The “to-many” relationship can better support the team’s operational development through a certain scale effect.
Dilemma 5. Time resources and space resources are difficult to integrate
Time resources and space resources are the two goals of traffic optimization. To a certain extent, they are inseparable, and the two can be transformed. There is not enough time and space to make up, and there is not enough time to change, so how to integrate the two becomes extremely important. From the perspective of large management departments, the three giants of transportation, housing construction, and public security are all involved in road time and space resources. However, from the perspective of the public security department, there are many management departments, such as the Facilities Section, the Traffic Management Section, the Order Section, the Science and Technology Section, the Planning Section, the Signal Section, etc. If the cooperation of these departments is not very close, it will often lead to the integrated development of the two. influences.
At the same time, the integration of time and space has relatively high requirements for professional teams, requiring both the optimal allocation of time resources and the optimal allocation of space resources, and close cooperation. This time the guidance also emphasizes this in many places. The value produced by the two forces is not an additive relationship, but a multiplication relationship. Without the cooperation of space resource optimization, the effect of time resource optimization is very limited, and there is no active role of time resource optimization, and space resource optimization is often tedious.
Dilemma 6. Traffic control equipment conditions are also one of the constraints.
hardware conditions can be divided into three aspects: detection equipment, execution equipment, and control system. It is a prerequisite for the professionalization of traffic signal timing, but we have also encountered it in reality. Various constraints.
First of all, the detector includes many methods, such as geomagnetism, coil, video, radar, floating car, etc., since they all exist on the market, they all have value. No detector is error-free, and no detector can provide comprehensive data support for traffic signal control. How to improve the accuracy and reliability of the equipment and provide more comprehensive control parameters at the same time is a problem to be solved urgently.
Secondly, there are many brands of control machines, which can be connected in name, but in fact it is almost impossible, which has a great influence on the signal control effect. In addition, the functions of the controller are countless, and the price of the controller varies greatly. In terms of signal optimization effects, more attention should be paid to the "execution" of the controller.
Finally, it is the control system. Traffic is human-participated traffic. Traffic problems are much more complicated. Whether in academia or practice, there is currently no mature area adaptive control algorithm that can stand the test of reality. It’s still a very early application. Therefore, equipment conditions are one of the constraints. How to play a greater role with limited resources is a practical approach.
Dilemma Seven. The assessment and evaluation of signal specialization is not perfect.
Each place has different business requirements, different traffic characteristics, and different optimization basic conditions. It is difficult to have a comprehensive and highly operable set. Assessment and evaluation methods. This kind of lack caused the high-quality professional team to be not well selected before the start of the project, and the lack of necessary supervision and assessment during the project implementation process led to a decline in the quality of the project, and the final project acceptance lacked sufficient persuasiveness. . It is recommended that provinces and cities, based on their actual needs, formulate specialized assessment and evaluation methods for signal timing with local characteristics under the requirements of relevant national standards.
