Evolution of road traffic congestion control: A survey from perspective of sensing, communication, and computation

Road traffic congestion can inevitably degrade road infrastructure and decrease travel efficiency in urban traffic networks, which can be relieved by employing appropriate congestion control. According to different developmental driving forces, in this paper, the evolution of road traffic congestion control is divided into two stages. The ever-growing number of advanced sensing techniques can be seen as the key driving force of the first stage, called the sensing stage, in which congestion control strategies experienced rapid growth owing to the accessibility of traffic data. At the second stage, i.e., the communication stage, communication and computation capability can be regarded as the identifying symbols for this stage, where the ability of collecting finer-grained insight into transportation and mobility reality improves dramatically with advances in vehicular networks, Big Data, and artificial intelligence. Specifically, as the pre-requisite for congestion control, in this paper, existing congestion detection techniques are first elaborated and classified. Then, a comprehensive survey of the recent advances for current congestion control strategies with a focus on traffic signal control, vehicle route guidance, and their combined techniques is provided. In this regard, the evolution of these strategies with continuous development of sensing, communication, and computation capability are also introduced. Finally, the paper concludes with several research challenges and trends to fully promote the integration of advanced techniques for traffic congestion mitigation in transportation systems.