Toward V2I communication technology-based solution for reducing road traffic congestion in smart cities

Abstract

Due to the limited capacity of road networks and sporadic on-route events, road traffic congestions are posing serious problems in most big cities worldwide and resulting in considerable number of casualties and financial losses. In order to deal efficiently with these problems and alleviate their impact on individuals, environment, and economic activities, advanced traffic monitoring and control tools (e.g., SCATS and SCOOT) are being widely used in hundreds of major cities in the world. However, due to increasing road traffic and dynamic spatio-temporal events, additional proactive mechanisms remain needed to prevent traffic congestions. Within this context, we argue that the emergent V2X communication technologies, and especially V2I (Vehicle to Infrastructure), would be of great help. To this end, we investigate in this paper the opportunities that could be offered by V2I technology in improving commuters' journey duration and mitigating the above irritating and frequent problems. We then propose an approach where road-side facilities (e.g. traffic light controllers at road intersections) communicate traffic light cycle information to approaching vehicles. Based on this information, the vehicles collaboratively determine their optimal speeds and other appropriate actions to undertake in order to cross road intersections with minimum delays while ultimately avoiding stoppings. The obtained evaluation results show that our approach achieves a significant gain in terms of the commuters' average travel time reduction.