Development of a Platoon Priority Control Strategy Without Smart Advance Warning Flasher for Isolated High-Speed Intersection
Principal Investigator:
Henry Liu, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering
Project Summary:
This research is in response to the Mn/DOT problem statement on traffic safety and operations requesting the development of an intelligent control system for isolated intersections with high-speed approaches, including platoon-priority control strategy and smart advance warning flashers (AWF). A significant number of Mn/DOT signalized intersections operate under isolated control. At many of these signals, it is common for an approaching vehicle platoon to face a red signal because of a single vehicle on one of the conflicting approaches. In addition, advance warning flashers, which warn motorists on high-speed approaches that the signal phase will be turning yellow, are used by Mn/DOT for selected intersections. However, the system introduces a trailing overlap of a fixed interval (leading flash) at the end of the arterial phase every cycle, which may cause some dilemma zone problems. To address these issues, the researchers aim to develop an intelligent traffic control system for detecting and moving forward platoons approaching a traffic signal with or without AWF to eliminate the dilemma zone problem and adapt to time-variant traffic conditions. To evaluate and improve the proposed control system, hardware-in-the-loop simulation will be used and system performance improvements will be quantified in terms of operational efficiency and safety. The research team has developed an analytical model that can evaluate platoon-priority traffic signal strategy under various conditions and is testing the platoon-priority strategy using the hardware-in-the-loop simulation.
Sponsors:
- Minnesota Department of Transportation
Project Details:
- Start date: 05/2007
- Project Status: Completed
- Research Area: Transportation Safety and Traffic Flow