Network operation reliability in a Manhattan-like urban system with adaptive traffic lights

•Network Operation Reliability (NOR) is proposed to depict traffic breakdown.•A simulation model considering route choice behavior is presented.•Adaptive traffic signals can enhance NOR if using geometric shortest path.•A simple perimeter control strategy is shown to fail to enhance the NOR.•NOR can be remarkably enhanced if using the time shortest path information.

Traffic breakdown to global gridlock occurring in congested traffic network makes the serious traffic congestion even much worse. This paper has proposed to use Network Operation Reliability (NOR) to quantitatively depict the probabilistic feature of traffic breakdown to global gridlock. The Nagel–Schreckenberg cellular automaton model has been used to simulate the traffic flow in a Manhattan-like urban network. A simple adaptive traffic light strategy has been proposed. It has been shown that if vehicles choose to use geometric shortest path, the adaptive traffic signals are able to remarkably enhance the NOR and sometimes the average velocity and the arrival rate as well. The vehicle distribution has been investigated, which has heuristically explained the enhancement of the NOR. A simple perimeter control strategy has been shown to fail to enhance the NOR. Finally, we show that if the time shortest path information could be provided and updated timely, then the NOR can be remarkably enhanced but the adaptive traffic signals have only trivial effect on NOR.