Evaluating the impacts of urban corridor traffic signal optimization on vehicle emissions and fuel consumption |
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Authors: | Jaeyoung Kwak Jaesup Lee |
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Institution: | 1. Center for Transportation Studies, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of Virginia , Charlottesville , VA , 22904 , USA;2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering , Aalto University , Espoo , 02150 , Finland;3. Transportation Mobility &4. Planning Division, Virginia Department of Transportation , Richmond , VA , 23219 , USA |
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Abstract: | This study investigates the impacts of traffic signal timing optimization on vehicular fuel consumption and emissions at an urban corridor. The traffic signal optimization approach proposed integrates a TRANSIMS microscopic traffic simulator, the VT-Micro model (a microscopic emission and fuel consumption estimation model), and a genetic algorithm (GA)-based optimizer. An urban corridor consisting of four signalized intersections in Charlottesville, VA, USA, is used for a case study. The result of the case study is then compared with the best traffic signal timing plan generated by Synchro using the TRANSIMS microscopic traffic simulator. The proposed approach achieves much better performance than that of the best Synchro solution in terms of air quality, energy and mobility measures: 20% less network-wide fuel consumption, 8–20% less vehicle emissions, and nearly 27% less vehicle-hours-traveled (VHT). |
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Keywords: | traffic signal optimization fuel consumption vehicle emissions genetic algorithm (GA) TRANSIMS VT-Micro model |
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