Controlling Traffic without Tolls: A Non-Monetary Framework for Autonomous Intersections

Abstract

The increasing complexity of urban transportation systems, driven by connected and automated vehicles, calls for new modeling paradigms and scalable control strategies. We propose a non-monetary control framework that leverages autonomous intersection management to influence routing decisions without tolls. The approach uses timestamp-based scheduling adjustments at roadside units (RSUs) to introduce path-dependent delays or advancements, steering traffic toward socially efficient flows. We develop a hierarchical architecture that separates real-time intersection control from network-level coordination. The resulting model admits a congestion-game formulation with path-dependent node costs. We establish the existence and essential uniqueness of equilibrium flows, eliminating ambiguities due to multiple equilibria and enabling a scalable and tractable bilevel optimization formulation for system-level incentive design. Experiments on the Sioux Falls network show that the proposed approach reduces the efficiency gap between user equilibrium and system-optimal flows by up to 71% under realistic constraints. These results demonstrate the potential of non-monetary, infrastructure-light control for next-generation intelligent transportation and urban mobility systems.