Coordinate signal timing efficiently with traffic-adaptive signal control for networks

  • Free your city from spillbacks and long queues

    PTV Balance is your ideal traffic-adaptive signal control for networks. Unlike systems with a fixed time control, adaptive signal control reacts to what's happening on the road and efficiently utilises the capacity of nodes across entire networks. It automatically designs a range of control options that can be evaluated using a model, before being applied in the field. The model-based network control optimises signal programs every five minutes in response to current traffic flows. This means: The best control option always gets a green light – even over multiple nodes – for an efficient traffic flow at intersections.

Activate green waves across your network with adaptive signal control

  • PTV Balance allows you to orchestrate traffic lights across multiple nodes to cover entire networks and activate green waves. At the heart of the software is a two-layer real-time transport model. In the macroscopic stage, PTV Balance uses detector data to derive the traffic density on individual routes and side roads. This stage can also be handled by PTV Optima, the model-based solution for traffic prediction, which increases sensitivity to known roadworks and accidents.

    Based on the results of the macroscopic model, PTV Balance calculates different strategic framework signal plans. An integrated mesoscopic model evaluates the signal control options over multiple nodes within seconds – taking into account their effects on stops, waiting times and blocking backs. This evaluation is based on a custom performance index, which represents the weighted sum of all stops, waiting periods and blocking backs.

  • Optimise green shares and offsets across your network with adaptive signal control

    Traffic engineers quickly adjust the weighting for each signal group and have the calculation results ready and on display in the graphical user interface. This makes it easier to calibrate PTV Balance as part of a simulation and improves monitoring during operations. The adaptive signal control for networks transmits the optimal framework signal plan to the local control devices, where they are either applied directly or refined locally with PTV Epics. The adaptive signal control for networks repeats the full optimisation process every five minutes.

    A demand model created in PTV Visum provides PTV Balance with network and demand data. At the same time, this can also be used as input for PTV Vissim simulations, and for testing and calibration. As the parameters of the traffic lights are editable, you can apply them across the programmes PTV Visum, PTV Vissim, PTV Balance and PTV Epics. With PTV Balance, you create dynamic green waves without a lot of detailed planning and simulation and reduce waiting times at intersections, travel times, emissions and noise in your network.