COLOMBO Deliverable 2.3: Performance of the Traffic Light Control System for different Penetration Rates

Abstract

The aim of D2.3 is to show how the traffic control system proposed by COLOMBO in the previous D2.2 has been extended and how it reacts without full knowledge of the vehicles approaching the controlled intersection. At first, the developed extensions of the traffic light algorithms to deal with incomplete knowledge are presented. Two methods to estimate the real values of a traffic measure from observations of only a fraction of vehicles are given. The first estimates the amount of vehicles on the controlled roads using vehicle lengths and positions, the second attempts to determine the length of queues in front of the controlled intersections. A third method to cope with incomplete knowledge puts additional constraints to the selection of a traffic light phase, prohibiting to select the same one too often. The document then presents how the parameters for the traffic light were obtained off-line, this means using configuration process performed before evaluating the traffic light. The results obtained from subsequent evaluations are then presented. They show that the developed traffic light systems outperform conventional, fixed-cycle traffic lights for equipment rates above 10%.