Efficient planning, control and management of urban and metropolitan traffic have for long been judged as key issues that civil servants and experts must address in order to make, or at least keep, our cities liveable. A subject of such economic and social relevance for the country would deserve a much more well-structured methodological approach than is currently the case, for it entails multidisciplinary instruments and knowledge. This approach can now be considerably improved by introducing into the transport sector the new technologies achieved by the advances in information science and electronics over the past few years. These new technologies will be analysed in this work both with reference to transport infrastructures and to system management.
