Copyright © 2012 Ailing Huang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Although more attention has been attracted to benefit evaluation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) deployment, how ITS impact the traffic system and make great effects is little considered. As a subsystem of ITS, in this paper, Intelligent Transportation Management System (ITMS) is studied with its impact mechanism on the road traffic system. Firstly, the correlative factors between ITMS and the road traffic system are presented and 3 positive feedback chains are defined. Secondly, we introduce the theory of Fundamental Diagram (FD) and traffic system entropy to demonstrate the correlative relationship between ITMS and feedback chains. The analyzed results show that ITMS, as a negative feedback factor, has damping functions on the coupling relationship of all 3 positive feedback chains. It indicates that with its deployment in Beijing, ITMS has impacted the improvement of efficiency and safety for the road traffic system. Finally, related benefits brought by ITMS are presented corresponding to the correlative factors, and effect standards are identified for evaluating ITMS comprehensive benefits.