Dynamic allocation of traffic light plans as a traffic reduction strategy

摘要

The city of Medellin, like other cities in the world, is facing major mobility issues caused by the accelerated growth of the vehicle fleet in the last decade. The efficient operation of the traffic light network plays a fundamental role in the search for solutions to achieve an agile, comfortable, safe and sustainable mobility. For this reason, the Municipal Administration has made important investments in its updating and technological modernization that allows actions for a better performance. Currently the traffic lights of the city are operated by classic programming models, mostly at fixed times in different time zones and others in modes actuated and semi-actuated as scheduled, without responding to changing traffic conditions, making it necessary to search for autonomous traffic regulation systems that adapt their behavior according to the conditions. While adaptive systems based on a wide sensorisation for obtaining information online are an alternative, their current costs of implementation, maintenance and operation, has led to evaluate the new global trends in terms of information capture, storage, processing and use in the optimization of the operation of the traffic signal network. This is how the city of Medellin has been consolidating a Big Data storage system and has developed a technological platform capable of receiving it and executing actions on the traffic light system when it identifies that there are events that generate traffic variations different from normal or daily conditions, which has allowed to improve mobility conditions according to the results obtained, which will be detailed later. This first part of this document is an introduction of the different modes of operation of a traffic light network commonly used; the second part contains a brief description of the city's traffic light network; in the third part, the collaborative data systems are studied; the fourth part develops the solution scheme adopted by Medellin based on the collaborative data system; subsequently the results of the implementation of the system in a specific crossroads of the city are presented; and it ends with some brief conclusions in this regard.