Hortatory operations in highway traffic management

摘要

This article examines two aspects of traffic management for highway networks. First, we introduce the term hortatory operations to describe highway traffic management as a type of human-machine system in which human operators have limited ability to directly control activities in the system. Instead, they must rely heavily on distributing messages of advice and encouragement as a means to achieve smooth traffic behavior. We discuss some of the features of this type of system. Second, we portray traffic management as a process that integrates both quantitative and qualitative information. We then describe the development and testing of a decision-aiding software tool that combines the two types of information. The tool supports traffic management by helping operators differentiate between demand-based and incident-based congestion. The decision aid's performance was investigated using real traffic data. The results of statistical analysis showed that the integrated process had superior performance compared to the "traditional" quantitative analysis running alone.