Better traffic signals can cut greenhouse gas emissions
Sitting in traffic during rush hour is not just frustrating for drivers; it also adds unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Now a study by researchers at MIT could lead to better ways of programming a city’s stoplights to reduce delays, improve efficiency, and reduce emissions. The new findings are reported in a pair of papers by assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering Carolina Osorio and alumna Kanchana Nanduri SM ’13, published in the journals Transportation Science and Transportation Research: Part B. In these papers, the researchers describe a method of combining vehicle-level data with less precise — but more comprehensive — city-level data on traffic patterns to produce better information than current systems provide. “What we do,” Osorio says, “is develop algorithms that allow major transportation agencies to use high-resolution models of traffic to solve optimization problems.” Typically, such timing determinations are set to optimize travel times along selected major...