Urban traffic control in modular/switching deterministic-timed Petri nets

Deterministic-timed Petri nets (DTPNs) are adopted in this paper in order to microscopically model a signalized urban area. The proposed representation may be viewed, at a higher level, as composed of modules which interact by means of immediate (that is, non-timed) transitions. Such a representation allows two levels of traffic control: the high level switches between different internal structures of the modules, in order to modify the model of the traffic system according to the system state, whereas the low level optimizes the performances of the traffic system by solving a mathematical programming problem which minimizes the number of vehicles in the system.