CONNECTED SMART MOBILITY IN CANADA: COOPERATIVE VEHICLE-SIGNAL CONTROL

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The rapid growth of passenger cars and freight volumes has caused severe road congestion in most cities in Canada, which significantly reduced the reliability of transportation services. According to a transportation analytic firm Inrix, Montreal and Toronto were ranked as the 23rd and 38th most congested cities globally in 2017. In Canada's nine largest cities, the overall direct congestion cost, including costs of delay, fuel and emissions, was estimated to be more than CAD $3.7 billion annually. In the United States, the cost is anticipated to increase from USD $78.5 billion in 2013 to USD $120.8 billion in 2030. As such, the need of mitigating congestion, including urban network upgrade and innovative transportation services, is an urgent task. However, the current transportation infrastructure development and the increase of road miles in Canada are not keeping up with the increase of traffic volumes to address road congestion. On the other hand, the recent development of connected vehicles results in proactive traffic operations to optimize the performance of urban networks. Developing connected vehicles to realize "Green and Innovative Transportation" is also within Canada's strategic plan to improve transportation services in 2030. The proposed research program aims at developing an innovative connected vehicle application to integrate both vehicles and infrastructures to mitigate congestion and to improve transportation services. Four interrelated Focus Areas are proposed to address key challenges hindering the connected vehicle application development and evaluation. Focus Area I includes the development of a multi-layer vehicle control system on both road segments and networks to maximize transportation performance. Focus Area II aims at developing a proactive signal control system to optimize signal plans. Focus Area III will design a cooperative control framework to integrate the vehicle and signal control systems. Focus Area IV aims at constructing a field experiment to evaluate the real-world benefits of the proposed system. The research represents a unique contribution to connected vehicle implementations in terms of controlling both vehicles and infrastructures. It will also provide specialized training of HQP that is tailored to meet the global need for the development of intelligent transportation systems. The increasing travel time delay and fuel usage, and the profound socio-economic, environmental and health impacts of road congestion necessitate a paradigm shift towards smart cities with connected vehicles. The research will provide a direct decision support for the integrated control of individual vehicles and roadside infrastructures to mitigate road congestion under connected vehicle environment. It will also help automotive industries and different levels of government in Canada improve the quality of transportation services, and bridge the gap between industry and government for the development of smart cities.