A cost effective intelligent solution to reduce traffic congestion

Major difficulty of finding a solution for heavily congested roads in city areas is the unpredictable nature of traffic flow rates at a given time. There can be variations due to unexpected accidents, breakdowns, events and other emergency situations which may occur due to political or environmental issues. Developing road infrastructure or imposing restrictions on motor vehicles entering city areas would not be cost effective solutions for this problem, especially in developing countries like Sri Lanka. This may be due to lack of funds to improve the infrastructure, the objections of the general public on applying restrictions on the inflow of vehicles or difficulties on acquiring lands to construct roads in highly populated areas. If it is possible to have proper traffic directing plans with the variation of traffic flow rates it is possible to reduce congestions with the existing infrastructure with minimal cost. This paper presents such a solution where new efficient traffic plans can be generated at real-time with the latest information which can be acquired with the latest communication technologies. Traffic conditions were transmitted using mobile or satellite communication channels as required from the pre-determined locations. Then a better traffic plan is achieved by identifying a congested junction or junctions in a city and rearranging the traffic flow in such a way that the interruptions to the continuous traffic flow are minimized at the congested location or locations. The proposed intelligent software tool can generate efficient traffic plans and can be used as a decision support system to reduce the traffic congestion.