An emergency vehicle traffic signal preemption system considering queue spillbacks along routes and negative impacts on non‐priority traffic

• Published in: IET intelligent transport systems 2024-08, Vol.18 (8), p.1385-1395
• Main Authors: Chen, Yen‐Yu, Wang, Jin‐Yuan, Lo, Shih‐Ching, Sung, Wei‐Ting
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: intelligent transportation systems; management and control; road traffic control; traffic modelling; transport modelling and microsimulation
• ISSN: 1751-956X; 1751-9578
• DOI: 10.1049/itr2.12518

In urban areas, emergency vehicles (EVs) need efficient traffic signal preemption to ensure timely responses during peak hours. While emergency vehicle traffic signal preemption (EVTSP) has garnered significant attention in the literature, the issues of queue spillbacks and negative impacts on non‐priority traffic have been relatively underreported. These issues are particularly critical during peak hours, notably in densely populated urban areas. This study presents an EVTSP system that considers queue spillbacks on approaches along the routes of EVs and the negative impacts of signal preemption on non‐priority traffic. The proposed control system has four key components: (1) a queue length management algorithm to ensure that an EV will not be impeded by excessive queues, particularly on its initial approaches along its route; (2) a signal preemption algorithm to guarantee uninterrupted passage of an EV even for approaches experiencing queue spillbacks; (3) a traffic status recovery algorithm to alleviate the extra waiting time for non‐priority vehicles after an EV crosses each intersection; and (4) a signal plan recovery algorithm to smoothly transit traffic signals to normal operation. The experimental results confirm that the proposed system considerably improves the travel time of an EV and mitigates the negative impacts on non‐priority traffic. This study proposed an emergency vehicle traffic signal preemption system that considers queue spillbacks on approaches along the routes of EVs and the negative impacts of signal preemption on non‐priority traffic. These issues, namely, queue spillbacks and the negative impacts, have been relatively underreported in the literature. Comprehensive experimental tests were conducted, and the results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system.