Real Time Computation of Optimal Signal Timing to Maximize Vehicular Throughput for a Traffic Junction

Traffic congestion impacts turn-around-time, productivity, economy and global warming. It is one of the significant challenges the world is facing and hence there is a focused approach to address the same. Parameters-of-significance (PoS) to monitor traffic congestion are identified and research is carried out to define enabling technologies to monitor these PoS. As of now signaling electronics is oblivious of the vehicle densities and their intended direction of travel. Often, the GREEN phase is unutilized as and when no vehicles are traveling in the lane OR the lane ahead has no capacity to accommodate any more vehicles. It is prudent that the un-utilized GREEN phase in both the above opportunity be handed over to the next sequential direction with waiting vehicles. It is also advisable to define GREEN phase proportional to the traffic congestion. The signal timings for different travel directions should be a function of vehicle density. This will also take into consideration the peak and lean traffic directions. This is a first step towards achieving uniform vehicle density. The above can be achieved only if real time data acquisition and computation enables decision making. This paper evolves strategy to improve traffic flow by computing the GREEN phase in real time, taking into account other infrastructural inputs like road quality, number of lanes.