Pre-timed control for an under-saturated and over-saturated isolated intersection: a Bee Colony Optimization approach

ABSTRACT In this paper we study the problem of determining the optimum cycle and phase lengths for isolated signalized intersections. Calculation of the optimal cycle and green phase lengths is based on the minimization of the average control delay experienced by all vehicles that arrive at the intersection within a given time period. We consider under-saturated as well as over-saturated conditions at isolated intersections. The defined traffic signal timing problem, that belongs to the class of combinatorial optimization problems, is solved using the Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) metaheuristic approach. The BCO is a biologically inspired method that explores collective intelligence applied by honey bees during the nectar collecting process. The numerical experiments performed on some examples show that the proposed approach is competitive with other methods. The obtained results show that the proposed approach is capable of generating high-quality solutions within negligible processing times.