Impact of transition between signal timing plans in social cost based in delay, fuel consumption and air emissions

Abstract

Significant effects of traffic congestion include the cost associated with extra travel time, fuel consumption, and gas emissions. This paper develops a mathematical function to quantify the monetary impact of transition designs between signal timing plans on users and the environment. This function offers an approach to reduce problems such as excessive travel time, pollution emissions and fuel consumption. The proposed social cost function is evaluated for various transition plans to assess the impact of the number of steps required to adjust signal timing. The relationships between delay, fuel consumption and gas emissions and the number of steps needed to achieve the transition are also analysed.