On using petri nets for representing and controlling signalized urban areas: New model and results

A microscopic model of signalized urban areas and its representation by means of stochastic-timed Petri nets are described in this paper, where a traffic-responsive control strategy, whose objective is the optimization of green duration of each stage, is also proposed. The Petri net representation here proposed is the new version of a previously proposed one, which was based on deterministic-timed Petri nets. The motivations of the need of proposing a new version and the differences between the two Petri net representations are clearly described. In addition, some results on the application of the proposed methodology to a single signalized intersection are included in the paper.