Communications of the ACM
Weather-Responsive Intersections Could Ease Traffic Congestion
University of Waterloo researchers have found that adjusting traffic signals at intersections during snowstorms could reduce driving delays by as much as 20%.
Credit: Waterloo News
Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, collected data and ran computer simulations and found that adjusting the signals at intersections during snowstorms could reduce traffic delays by as much as 20%.
Signals in many cities are timed according to optimization models to safely get as many vehicles as possible through intersections based on a variety of factors.
Explained the University of Waterloo’s Liping Fu, “The problem is that those parameters all assume normal weather conditions."
Researchers analyzed video of a busy intersection to gauge how motorists alter their driving during snowstorms.
The data was fed to computer simulations to optimize the timing of signals at a single intersection and on a stretch of road with four coordinated intersections.
Changes were made to improve safety, such as increasing the yellow interval to account for vehicles traveling slower and requiring more time to stop.
Next steps include the development of technology using video cameras and artificial intelligence to automatically tweak the timing of signals in response to traffic changes caused by a variety of factors.
From University of Waterloo News
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