Skip to main content

Introduction to traffic signals

A new book by Alastair Gollop, senior ITS consultant at Mott McDonald, Traffic Signals, offers a comprehensive guide to traffic signals from first principles and design issues to equipment and testing, commissioning and assessments. In addition, there are sections covering the history and future of signals. Although based on equipment and operating systems utilised in the UK, the principles covered are relevant to users worldwide. Aimed at anyone interested by traffic signals, Gollop says the book assume
March 10, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
A new book by Alastair Gollop, senior ITS consultant at Mott McDonald, Traffic Signals, offers a comprehensive guide to traffic signals from first principles and design issues to equipment and testing, commissioning and assessments. In addition, there are sections covering the history and future of signals. Although based on equipment and operating systems utilised in the UK, the principles covered are relevant to users worldwide.

Aimed at anyone interested by traffic signals, Gollop says the book assumes no prior knowledge, but builds to a complete introduction to the subject. It is primarily aimed at traffic signal practitioners of all levels, graduate engineers seeking an introduction to the field and members of other engineering specialism's and client groups wishing to further their understanding of the subject.

Traffic Signals looks at the way in which modern signals operate and the equipment commonly used in current traffic control systems in the UK. It also looks at how signalised junctions and crossings are designed, explaining the fundamental design principles, and how these are used by modern software modelling tools to predict traffic operation.
 
Included within the book is a set of standard detail drawings which are commonly used when specifying and designing projects.

Related Content

  • EU aims to turn ITS theory into practice
    May 18, 2016
    Gareth Horton explains how the European Commission’s Transport Research and Innovation Portal can help expedite research and turn theory into practice. Over the next few years Europe’s transport systems face a number of challenges, such as improving urban mobility while at the same time protecting population health and accommodating the accessibility needs of an ageing but active population.
  • Anywhere card delivers prepaid contactless ticketing
    January 25, 2012
    David Crawford investigates a far reaching initiative in integrated travel. The Port Authority Transit Corporation (PATCO), an operator of high speed commuter rail in the north eastern US, is not one of the world's best known transit providers. Its 13 stations along a single east-west route (three of them interchanges with other regional commuter lines) handle 40,000 passengers a day, travelling to and from Philadelphia, the US' fifth most populous city.
  • Wavetronix radar-based traffic sensor cuts costs
    May 30, 2013
    While initial cost of radar based detection may be higher than that traditional loops, lower maintenance costs more than balance the books. Following successful field tests, the US city of Greenville, North Carolina, has recently agreed a new policy of phasing in Wavetronix traffic sensor technology’s radar-based SmartSensor Matrix system across its signalised traffic intersections. City traffic engineer Rik DiCesare expects the incremental implementation to deliver benefits to both the city’s taxpayers an
  • Global navigation reference point to test zero emission driverless vehicles
    December 4, 2014
    A successful consortium led by the UK’s Transport research Laboratory (TRL) has been selected by Innovate UK to deliver the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment), one of three projects awarded to test driverless vehicles in UK urban locations. The US$12.5 million project will see three trials of different types of zero emission automated vehicles within an innovative, technology-agnostic testing environment set in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The ‘prime meridian’ was establi