A traffic congestion avoidance algorithm with dynamic road pricing for smart cities

The traffic congestion problem is a common issue for the residents of metropolises. Although expanding the capacity of transportation systems and stimulating the public transportation may decrease the traffic congestion, they cannot completely solve the traffic congestion problem. As a solution for the worsening traffic congestion problem in urban areas, road pricing systems have been employed. In this paper, we propose a radically different road pricing scheme to prevent and decrease the traffic congestion in metropolises. Unlike designating a small congestion charge zone in a city, we propose to employ a road pricing system over the entire city. Thus, our road pricing system can control the traffic flow in the entire traffic network of the city. Furthermore, the road prices are adjusted dynamically based on the instantaneous traffic densities of each road in the city in order to rapidly and efficiently control the traffic flow and to prevent the traffic congestion. Moreover, we propose to change the road prices according to the past usage statistics of the road by predicting a possible congestion. The simulation results of our road pricing algorithm show that traffic congestion is prevented over the entire traffic network and the traffic densities of the roads are homogenized. © 2013 IEEE