Accommodating high value-of-time drivers in market-driven traffic signal control

In this paper, we propose a market-driven approach to traffic signal control. In contrast to traditional traffic engineering approaches, our approach gives agency and decision-making influence to individual drivers and exploits auction mechanisms to make traffic control decisions. Drivers make payments to their corresponding movement managers (each responsible for a particular directional flow through the intersection), and movement managers then compete for control of the signal. These financial transactions, if treated literally provide an alternate source of funding transportation infrastructure. Previous work with this model has demonstrated the ability to achieve better overall traffic flow performance than actuated control, a simple adaptive traffic signal control strategy based on detection and monitoring of waiting vehicles. Here we consider the design and analysis of bidding strategies capable of factoring in a given driver's value of time (VOT), as indicated by the amount of voluntary contributions that are made on top of the fixed fee that every driver is charged. We analyze the potential for expediting high VOT drivers without undue disruption of overall traffic flows.