Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory: a C-ITS to improve mobility and pollution

Intersections, and more traffic signals, introduce stops along trip increasing travel time, stress, fuel consumption and emissions. To confine the stop-and-go phenomenon due to traffic signals several researchers focused on the use of actuated traffic lights. In last years the digital transformation of cities give us lot of information could be used for several purposes, one of them is the implementation of cooperative-intelligent transportation systems (C-ITS). The paper introduces a specific C-ITS named Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory (GLOSA) that use V2I communication to calculate an optimal speed for the vehicle to pass the intersection avoiding idle time. Two simulations scenarios have been built to study the benefit of the service. The results demonstrate that even using a simple control algorithm with the aim to avoid the stop&go we observe a reduction of fuel consumption and emissions in the region of 5 to 12%.

I. Introduction

The scope of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is to optimize the efficiency of transportation systems and improve their safety, allowing road users to be better informed and, consequently, make decisions that reduce travel time, fuel consumption and emissions.