A Coordinated Spillback-Aware Traffic Optimization and Recovery at Multiple Intersections

Abstract

Efficient traffic control remains a challenging task, especially during and after special events such as emergency vehicle traversals or blocked links due to disabled vehicles. While existing approaches aim to reduce travel delays, they do not consider recovery from spillbacks caused by such interruptions in the traffic network. This paper (1) presents an optimal algorithm that maximizes the traffic flow through the road network while ensuring that spillbacks do not occur during normal operations, (2) proposes an effective, predictable mitigation strategy to recover from spillbacks caused by special events and which may have propagated through multiple links and/or intersections in the network, and (3) provides worst-case wait time bounds as well as recovery time bounds associated with the proposed techniques. Compared to existing approaches, our optimal strategy shows a 53.2% improvement in worst-case travel times. Additionally, our mitigation strategy can recover from spillbacks that have propagated through multiple links in the network by up to 50.9% quicker than the existing approaches.