Operation Regimes and Slower-is-Faster-Effect in the Control of Traffic Intersections

Abstract

The efficiency of traffic flows in urban areas is known to crucially depend on signal operation. Here, elements of signal control are discussed, based on the minimization of overall travel times or vehicle queues. Interestingly, we find different operation regimes, some of which involve a "slower-is-faster effect", where a delayed switching reduces the average travel times. These operation regimes characterize different ways of organizing traffic flows in urban road networks. Besides the optimize-one-phase approach, we discuss the procedure and advantages of optimizing multiple phases as well. To improve the service of vehicle platoons and support the self-organization of "green waves", it is proposed to consider the price of stopping newly arriving vehicles.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• When slower is faster
• Living in Living Cities
• Signal optimization in urban transport: A totally asymmetric simple exclusion process with traffic lights
• Vehicular traffic flow at an intersection with the possibility of turning
• Classification and Unification of the Microscopic Deterministic Traffic Models with Identical Drivers
• Platoon Forming Algorithms for Intelligent Street Intersections