Self-organized intersection control management for motorized and non-motorized traffic

Abstract

The rapid increase in urban population due to the urbanization has led to one of the major problems in urban areas, namely, traffic congestion. With the constraint on road surface in urban areas and limited city budget, it is almost impossible to build additional streets and/or increase the road surface to support such the increase in urban traffic. As a result, a new technology known as Virtual Traffic Lights (VTLs) was recently proposed that revolutionizes traffic management in urban areas. The VTL technology is an innovative approach that can efficiently and effectively manage traffic at intersections and it is shown to be able to significantly reduce commute time of urban workers. Despite the promising results of VTL, the VTL technology considers only vehicular traffic (i.e., motorized traffic) and has yet to provide support for non-motorized traffic (i.e., pedestrians and bicyclists on the road). This paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating the issue of pedestrian safety at crossings and proposing an integrated solution that enables the existing VTL technology to consider the presences of both motorized and non-motorized traffic in its implementation.