Urban Traffic Control System Review - A Sharjah City Case Study

According to the United Nations' statistics record, 54 percent of the world population live in cities. This ratio is projected to reach to 66% by 2050, where it was only 34% in the 1960s. The continuous growth in the urban population will lead to the increase in traffic volume. For an urban road network, the expansion of road infrastructure to improve the operation capacity can certainly match the needs for the growth in road traffic. However, it is not a sustainable solution due to the limited land resource and expensive construction. Improving the performance of traffic control systems can be an alternative solution to minimize the congestion and reduce the delays of travel. Sharjah has a population of 1.51 million with neighboring emirate of Dubai with 3.32 million and Ajman 0.54 million having a considerable amount of inter-emirate traffic, creating traffic congestion during peak hours. Sharjah Urban Traffic Control System (UTC) has a network of 47 traffic signals and 61 pedestrian signals connected by a microwave system and controlled by the SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimization Technique) software. The CCTV system and a control room to monitor all the junctions. As Sharjah being the cultural capital of the UAE and due to the steady growth of the city it has come to a stage to review the entire UTC system and the related ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) elements and come up with improvement suggestions and to cater the traffic growth to make the journey through Sharjah city a pleasurable experience. Along with possible improvement suggestions lessons learnt and challenges from operation and management of one of the world's popular software SCOOT is also discussed in this paper.