Harnessing Vehicular Broadcast Communications: DSRC-Actuated Traffic Control

Traffic congestion in major cities around the globe is a daunting problem that is getting worse as the speed of urbanization keeps increasing. The role of traffic lights (TLs) at intersections in regulating flows cannot be underestimated. Even though there are a variety of actuated traffic signals based on cameras or loop detectors, the vast majority of existing TLs in the world employ a timer-based decision logic which is clearly not very effective. In this paper, we present a new scheme for controlling traffic at intersections, which is known as dedicated short-range communications (DSRCs)-actuated traffic control. The proposed approach leverages the presence of DSRC radios in vehicles and gives priority (by displaying green light) to approaches (roads) that include DSRC-equipped vehicles (such as 10% or 20% of vehicles having DSRC radios). Using this priority mechanism, it is shown that the average waiting time at each TL can be significantly reduced. This, in turn, can reduce the average commute time of urban workers during rush hours substantially. One of the great advantages of the presented approach is that it can function well with even a low percentage of DSRC-equipped vehicles. Given that many industry forecasts predict a gradual penetration rate for the DSRC technology, this is a very attractive feature. It is also shown that the proposed new approach leads to a cost-effective solution for urban traffic control since the hardware and software platforms needed for its implementation are low cost.