Max-pressure traffic controller based on travel times: An experimental analysis

Abstract The traffic control of an arbitrary network of signalized intersections is considered. This work presents a new version of the recently proposed max-pressure controller, also known as back-pressure. The most remarkable features of the max-pressure algorithm for traffic signal control are: scalability, stability, and distribution. The modified version presented in this paper improves the practical applicability of the max-pressure controller by considering as input travel times instead of queue lengths. The two main practical advantages of this new version are: (i) travel times are easier to estimate than queue lengths, and (ii) max-pressure controller based on travel times has an inherent capacity-aware property, i.e., it takes into account the finite capacity of each link. Travel time tends to diverge when the queue length is close to its capacity. It should be noted that previous max-pressure algorithms rely exclusively on queue length measurements, which may be difficult to accomplish in practice. Moreover, these previous algorithms generally assume queues with unbounded capacity. This may be problematic because a model with unbounded capacity links is not able to reproduce spillbacks, which are one of the most critical phenomena that a traffic signal controller should avoid. After presenting the new version of the max-pressure controller, it is analyzed and compared with existing control policies in a microscopic traffic simulator. Moreover, results of a real implementation of the developed algorithm to a signalized intersection, located at an urban arterial in Jerusalem, are shown and analyzed. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this experiment is the first real implementation of a max-pressure controller at a signalized intersection.