Online travel time prediction for motorways and urban areas by microscopic simulation

The prediction of the future traffic situation not only allows reacting to incidents, it also provides the opportunity to anticipate on traffic problems before they really occur. As existing simulation programs do not offer the opportunity to change control tactics online and their source code was not available to adjust the programs, a new microscopic simulation approach was chosen in this project. This resulted into the MiOS program. This program can integrate various dynamic traffic measures at the network of motorways (ramp metering, speed control, route guidance information), rural roads and city streets (controlled intersections). This paper presents the microscopic online simulation framework MiOS to predict in real-time (every minute) travel times in the network (motorways as well as on the urban streets) with a rolling horizon of 30 minutes. It also provides the opportunity to compare the use of operative and alternative control tactics.