Optimizing Traffic Network around Grade Crossing for the Case of AALRT

The existing public transport system in Addis Ababa is critically insufficient to provide service for the existing travel demand. Public transportation is one and the most important means of easing traffic congestion for it makes roads work better by reducing the number of vehicles on the road. This shows that a great concern should go towards the expansion of high- capacity public transportation system like introduction of light rail, heavy rail, road bus transit, and high occupancy vehicles lanes, which coupled with better management of the existing road network and traffic management. We need therefore to have a clearly defined transport management technology to challenge the mobility issues of the city. Grade Crossing is a location where a public highway, road, street, or private roadway, including associated sidewalks, and pathways, crosses railroad tracks at grade (same level as the street).The aim of this thesis is to encourage grade crossing safety and reduce highway traffic delay. The safety of grade crossing can be promoted by removing those vehicles detected on the railroad tracks before the arrival of trains using CCTV camera by image processing technology. Reduce highway traffic delay by proper managing the phase sequence of the intersection. A system model is proposed and developing with the system. The optimization will be implemented into two steps. The first step, the delay function is approximated and represented by artificial neural network. Secondly optimization will be applied based on Levenberg-Marquardt optimization. We use different approach, instead of protecting grade crossing manually and showing the hostility to the highway drivers, we could develop an advanced traffic management system smart enough to control the traffic near grade crossings. In such a system, we could incorporate grade crossing information into traffic control and prevent the queue from backing onto the railroad tracks. Preemption of the traffic signal at/near a grade crossing is such an alternative to target safety ...