Using smart traffic lights to reduce CO2 emissions and improve traffic flow at intersections: simulation of an intersection in a small Portuguese city

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Osvaldo
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: Ribeiro, Fernando Reinaldo, Metrôlho, J.C.M.M., Dionísio, Rogério Pais
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.11/8907
• topic: CO2 emissions; Smart traffic lights; Smart intersections; CO2 estimation; Road traffic simulation; Vehicle specific power; Consumption estimation; Intelligent traffic lights

Reducing CO2 emissions is currently a key policy in most developed countries. In this article, we evaluate whether smart traffic lights can have a relevant role in reducing CO2 emissions in small cities, considering their specific traffic profiles. The research method is a quantitative modelling approach tested by computational simulation. We propose a novel microscopic traffic simulation framework, designed to simulate realistic vehicle kinematics and driver behaviour, and accurately estimate CO2 emissions. We also propose and evaluate a routing algorithm for smart traffic lights, specially designed to optimize CO2 emissions at intersections. The simulations reveal that deploying smart traffic lights at a single intersection can reduce CO2 emissions by 32% to 40% in the vicinity of the intersection, depending on the traffic density. The simulations show other advantages for drivers: an increase in average speed of 60% to 101% and a reduction in waiting time of 53% to 95%. These findings can be useful for city-level decision makers who wish to adopt smart technologies to improve traffic flows and reduce CO2 emissions. This work also demonstrates that the simulator can play an important role as a tool to study the impact of smart traffic lights and foster the improvement in smart routing algorithms to reduce CO2 emissions.