Design and evaluation of token-based reservation for a roadway system

Traffic congestion has become a major source of fuel waste, economic burden, environmental pollution, and commuter frustration. A lot of effort has been made to alleviate these problems, but traditional countermeasures, such as expanding transportation capacity, are no longer a sustainable solution to the rapidly growing levels of congestion. Both governments and transportation planners are actively engaged in the development of traffic management strategies and policies, but their endeavors are not sufficient either. Therefore, it is imperative to further improve the efficiency of the existing road infrastructure by leveraging the latest technological advances in computing and networking. Recent studies have shown that emerging technologies in vehicular networks have made the roadway reservation system a viable option for mitigating traffic congestion and improving transportation efficiency. In this paper, we present a roadway reservation system, where the drivers make reservations in advance in order to enter a high-priority lane. The drivers who successfully make the reservation are guaranteed certain quality of service, i.e. end-to-end travel delay. We propose a token-based reservation system which monitors and controls the traffic workload in real-time. We have also designed an on-line scheduling algorithm which maintains sufficient transportation efficiency by selecting which reservation requests should be accepted. The algorithm also handles any necessary user interaction for reservation. A comprehensive performance evaluation based on our simulation model demonstrates the practicality and soundness of the proposed reservation system. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.