A Strategy for Improved Traffic Flow
Description
Commuting is a significant cost in time and in travel expenses for working individuals and a major contributor to emissions in the United States. This project focuses on increasing the efficiency of an intersection through the use of "light metering." Light metering involves a series of lights leading up to an intersection forcing cars to stop further away from the final intersection in smaller queues instead of congregating in a large queue before the final intersection. The simulation software package AnyLogic was used to model a simple two-lane intersection with and without light metering. It was found that light metering almost eliminates start-up delay by preventing a long queue to form in front of the modeled intersection. Shorter queue lengths and reduction in the start-up delays prevents cycle failure and significantly reduces the overall delay for the intersection. However, frequent deceleration and acceleration for a few of the cars occurs before each light meter. This solution significantly reduces the traffic density before the intersection and the overall delay but does not appear to be a better emission alternative due to an increase in acceleration. Further research would need to quantify the difference in emissions for this model compared to a standard intersection.
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2018-05
Agent
- Author (aut): Glavin, Erin
- Thesis director: Pavlic, Theodore
- Committee member: Sefair, Jorge
- Contributor (ctb): Industrial, Systems and Operations Engineering Program
- Contributor (ctb): Barrett, The Honors College