Implementing an adaptive traffic signal control algorithm in an agent-based transport simulation

This paper describes the implementation of the fully traffic adaptive signal control algorithm by Lämmer in the agent-based transport simulation MATSim. The implementation is tested at an illustrative, single intersection scenario and compared to the results of Lammers MATLAB simulation. Plausibility of the self-controlled signals and overall results can be confirmed. Small deviations can be explained by differences in flow simulation and resolution of simulation time steps. In the simulation of the illustrative intersection, the adaptive control is proved to be stable and, overall, superior to a fixed-time control. Constant vehicle arrivals are simulated to show the performance of the control and its underlying sub-strategies. The expected behavior of the algorithm and its implementation are validated by analyzing queue lengths over time. The adaptive control significantly outperforms the fixed-time control for stochastic demand, where its ability to dynamically react to changes in flow becomes important

Adaptive traffic signal control using approximate dynamic programming

This paper presents a study on an adaptive traffic signal controller for real-time operation. The controller aims for three operational objectives: dynamic allocation of green time, automatic adjustment to control parameters, and fast revision of signal plans. The control algorithm is built on approximate dynamic programming (ADP). This approach substantially reduces computational burden by using an approximation to the value function of the dynamic programming and reinforcement learning to update the approximation. We investigate temporal-difference learning and perturbation learning as specific learning techniques for the ADP approach. We find in computer simulation that the ADP controllers achieve substantial reduction in vehicle delays in comparison with optimised fixed-time plans. Our results show that substantial benefits can be gained by increasing the frequency at which the signal plans are revised, which can be achieved conveniently using the ADP approach

Adaptive traffic signal control for real-world scenarios in agent-based transport simulations

This study provides an open-source implementation of a decentralized, adaptive signal control algorithm in the agent-based transport simulation MATSim, which is applicable for large-scale real-world scenarios. The implementation is based on the algorithm proposed by Lämmer and Helbing (2008), which had promising results, but was not applicable to real-world scenarios in its published form. The algorithm is extended in this paper to cope with realistic situations like different lanes per signal, small periods of overload, phase combination of non-conflicting traffic, and minimum green times. Impacts and limitations of the adaptive signal control are analyzed for a real-world scenario and compared to a fixed-time and traffic-actuated signal control. It can be shown that delays significantly reduce and queue lengths are lower and more stable than with fixed-time signals. Another finding is that the adaptive signal control behaves like a fixed-time control in overload situations and, therefore, ensures system-wide stability

Distributed Traffic Signal Control for Maximum Network Throughput

We propose a distributed algorithm for controlling traffic signals. Our algorithm is adapted from backpressure routing, which has been mainly applied to communication and power networks. We formally prove that our algorithm ensures global optimality as it leads to maximum network throughput even though the controller is constructed and implemented in a completely distributed manner. Simulation results show that our algorithm significantly outperforms SCATS, an adaptive traffic signal control system that is being used in many cities