Abstract. Tra c congestion is a major issue that plagues many urban road networks large and small. Tra c engineers are now leaning towards Intelligent Tra c Systems as many physical changes to road networks are costly or infeasible. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have become a popular paradigm for intelligent solutions to tra c management problems. There are many MAS approaches to tra c management that utilise market mechanisms. In market-based approaches, drivers "pay" to use the roadways. However, a major issue with many of these solutions is that they require technology that, as yet, does not exist or is not widely available. For example, they rely on a special software agent that resides within the vehicle. This "vehicle agent" is responsible for participating in the market mechanism and communicating with the transportation infrastructure. In this paper, an auction-based tra c controller is proposed which exploits all the benefits of market mechanisms without the need for a vehicle agent. Experimental results show that such a controller is better at reducing delay and increasing throughput in a simulated city, as compared to fixed-time signal controllers.
Vehicular traffic on urban road networks is of great interest to those who monitor air quality. Combustion emissions from transport vehicles are a major contributor of air pollution. More specifically, the release of fine particulate matter which has been linked to premature deaths. Travel and idle time are two factors that influence the amount of pollution generated by traffic. Reducing idle and travel times would have a positive impact on air quality. Thus, it is increasingly crucial to manage intersections effectively, particularly in congested cities and across a range of different types of traffic conditions. A variety of market-based multi-agent traffic management mechanisms have been proposed to improve traffic flow. In many of these systems drivers "pay" to gain access to favourable road ways (e.g., minimise travel time). A major obstacle in adopting many of these mechanisms is that the necessary communication infrastructure does not yet exist. They rely on vehicle-toinfrastructure and/or vehicle-to-vehicle communications. In this work, we propose a market-based mechanism which relies on existing technology (and in some places this technology is already in use). Experimental results show that our market-based approach is better at reducing idle and travel times as compared to fixed-time signal controllers.
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