Development of Dynamic Platoon Dispersion Models for Predictive Traffic Signal Control

As the development of traffic detection technology, recent research is directed to a new generation of signal control systems supported by new traffic data. One of these directions is dynamic predictive control by incorporating short-term prediction capability. This paper focuses on investigating dynamic platoon dispersion models which could capture the variability of traffic flow in a cross-sectional traffic detection environment. The dynamic models are applied to predict the evolution of traffic flow, and further used to produce signal timing plans that account not only for the current state of the system but also for the expected short-term changes in traffic flows. We investigate factors affecting model accuracy, including time-zone length, position of upstream traffic detection equipment, road section length, traffic volume, turning percentages, and computation time. The impact of these factors on the model’s performance is illustrated through a simulation analysis, and the computation performance of models is discussed. The results show that both the dynamic speed-truncated normal distribution model and dynamic Robertson model with dynamics outperform their respective static versions, and that they can be further applied for dynamic control.