Abstract
This paper introduces two traffic light strategies to control traffic and avoid traffic jam in urban networks. One strategy is a new traffic light scheduling system, which controls traffic light using local variables (waiting time and number of vehicle on links) but has a global impact on the traffic, using shared variables between neighbour intersections. The proposed traffic light scheduling system is designed based on eigenvector centrality of intersection relation matrix. The intersection relation matrix is a new representation of a junction which indicates the traffic relation between intersection’s links and adjacent intersections. The second contribution is expanding a new dual mode traffic light strategy (namely, Exit Status Traffic Light (ETL)), which notifies the drivers whether they are allowed to exit a street or not. In other words, vehicles are allowed to enter a street in both red and green ETL, but they are not allowed to exit the street for a long time in red ETL (while traffic is heavy in the subnetwork). The ETL gives a chance to relax traffic in a subnetwork and avoid traffic jam. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is analysed and evaluated by a number of simulations on three-way grid networks. Two-way rectangular grid networks are modelled via a cell transmission model (CTM). The macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) and the number of jammed cells are compared with two state-of-the-art methods.
Highlights
Urban areas faced severe traffic congestion in recent decades, which causes serious problems such as increasing human travel time, fuel consumption, and air pollution
To find a reasonable traffic light phasing, we propose two strategies to control the traffic flow and drivers’ behaviour, which are a combination of traffic responsive and predictive control strategies. e results indicate that the proposed strategies are able to distribute traffic uniformly, and the drivers redirect to less-crowded routes
We can see that the proposed method increases the network efficiency even when a traffic incident is simulated in the network
Summary
Urban areas faced severe traffic congestion in recent decades, which causes serious problems such as increasing human travel time, fuel consumption, and air pollution. Phasing traffic light using a reasonable method reduces the delay time and increases the speed of vehicles and pedestrians on urban networks. E traffic signal strategies are mainly categorized as fixed-timed, coordinated traffic responsive [1], and predictive control strategies. Simple implementation and low management cost are two main reasons to use the fixed-timed strategy in lots of current urban traffic systems. E drawbacks of the fixed-timed model are that the resulting settings are based on the historical data rather than real-time data. SCOOT [1, 2] and SCATS [1, 3] are two well-known methods of the traffic responsive strategy that control traffic light based on the current traffic status. E predictive control strategy is based on traffic forecasting models [4]. Ye et al [1] studied the predictive control models in detail
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