a-b-street/abstreet

Starter project: Improve traffic signal heuristics

Open

#8 opened on Nov 25, 2019

View on GitHub
 (6 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)Rust (6,779 stars) (256 forks)batch import
good first issue

Description

I can't find data about how Seattle traffic signals are actually timed right now. So for the moment, I'm automatically generating a policy for every intersection. There are a bunch of different policies for different types of intersections (for a 4-way, should there be 2 phases with no protected left turn or 4 phases with protected left turns?). Every phase is hardcoded to 30 seconds right now. A nice project contained to one layer of the code (just the map model) would be to improve these heuristics. For example, roads have a rank (primary > secondary > residential) from OpenStreetMap, so probably bigger roads should have longer durations.

Ex policy: https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/573edbd13e5aa4bedba0bd819d3d7b32dba11b59/map_model/src/traffic_signals.rs#L247

Contributor guide

Tech stack
rust
Domain
backenddata
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Rust programmingmap model basics
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
75
Research direction
Examine the traffic signal policy generation code in map model/src/traffic signals.rs, especially the line linked. Understand the current heuristic of 30 second phases. Consider how road rank from OpenStreetMap could be used to adjust phase durations. Review the 6 comments in the issue for additional context.