Signal priority for improving fluidity and decreasing fuel consumption

Abstract

Signal priority is a strategy to handle traffic that adjusts the timing of a traffic signal phases to achieve a mobility goal, typically to reduce congestion or waiting time. This strategy enables increased mobility and is usually used in public transport operations; it works by making small modifications to the phases of a cycle in order to delay the green phase or anticipating the end of the red phase. We build a detailed simulation of the city center where an industrial partner operated and introduce signal priority handling to improve operations and mobility for their heavy-duty vehicles. The idea is that when these vehicles stop at red signs, they incur high consumption to regain speed, and cause congestion on the traffic behind them due to their lower acceleration. Detailed computational experiments demonstrate that this strategy generates significant gains for the partner fleet and has a side benefit of also improving fluidity for the surrounding traffic.