Title:

Mathematics of Traffic-Light Queues

Abstract:

Everybody who waits for traffic signals on a regular basis, will undoubtedly have wondered whether it would be possible to find better traffic signal settings. Surely, mathematical methods must be available to optimize the length of green and red phases? In this talk we consider a typical signalized intersection and discuss various techniques to analyze waiting times and queue lengths. We will give a short introduction to queueing theory, which makes it clear why traffic-light queues are so complicated and why exact solution methods are rarely available.