Improving Traffic Light Control by Means of Fuzzy Logic

In urban areas, the traffic demand grows every year due to the constantly increasing number of vehicles. The consequence is a capacity drop of the roads followed by traffic problems like congestion, reduced travel time, increased fuel consumption, etc. This paper presents an adaptive traffic light controller based on fuzzy logic for improving the traffic flow on an isolated intersection. A set of fuzzy rules has been made that, using the collected information from road detectors (queue length, arrival flow, and exit flow), computes the amount of time for which the next phase should be shortened or extended. The proposed fuzzy control system is constituted of two parts: one for the primary driveway (with a higher volume of vehicles) and for the secondary driveway (with a lower volume of vehicles). The proposed controller is compared with a fixed signal program in three scenarios with different traffic demand proofing the effectiveness of the developed decision rules.