Traffic Light Scheduling, Value of Time, and Incentives

We study the intersection signalling control problem for cars with heterogeneous valuations of time (VoT). We are interested in a control algorithm that has some desirable properties: (1) it induces cars to report their VoT truthfully, (2) it minimizes the value of time lost for cars waiting at the intersection, and (3) it is computationally efficient. We obtain three main results: (1) We describe a computationally efficient heuristic forward search approach to solve the static problem. (2) We extend the solution of the static problem to the dynamic case. We couple our algorithm with a carefully designed payment scheme which yields an incentive compatible mechanism. (3) We describe simulation results that compare the social welfare obtained by our scheduling algorithm, as measured by the total value of waiting time, to the social welfare obtained by other intersection signalling control methods.

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