A Novel Real-Time Traffic Signal Control Strategy for Emergency Vehicles

Intelligent traffic signal control strategies for emergency vehicles (EV) is a research hotspot in intelligent transportation systems. Its research results will promote the shortening of the travel time of EVs, which is vital to saving lives and reducing property losses. This paper proposes a novel real-time traffic signal control strategy. The first step is called on-demand signal timing for reducing road saturation, which makes it possible that ordinary vehicles(OV) give way to EVs and make EVs travel faster, according to three indicators: the emergency response level(ERL), the congestion level of the road section(CLRS), and the time urgency level(TUL). The second step is called novel signal preemption, which combines non-intrusive preemption and intrusive preemption. This step provides green indicates and makes EVs pass through intersections quickly without stopping. The final step is called the recovery cycle strategy, which restores the road network to the normal situation as soon as possible by using linear programming(LP) to find the shortest green time in each phase after an EV passes the intersection. This paper conducts simulation experiments on an urban traffic simulator SUMO. The experimental results show that our novel strategy can shorten the travel time and reduce the traffic impact on the road network caused by prioritizing the EVs significantly. Compared with the fixed-time control method (FTCM), Min’s flexible signal preemption method(FSPM), and Qin’s intrusive signal preemption method (ISPM), our method can optimize travel time by up to 62.85%, 50.83%, and 11.62%, respectively.