inControl ep36 - Markos Papageorgiou: Traffic Control — Theory and Practice
Sep 15, 2025
Markos Papageorgiou, Professor Emeritus and pioneer in intelligent transportation systems, shares his insights on the evolution of traffic control. He discusses how traffic control theory has developed from its early days to modern methods, focusing on the dynamic between urban and motorway systems. Markos explains the impact of automation and connectivity on traffic flow, as well as innovative solutions like the Alinea ramp metering system. He also touches upon the future of traffic management, emphasizing the interplay of real-time data and modeling techniques.
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Chance Choices Shaped A Career
- Markos traced two early life decisions that shaped his career: attending a German high school and choosing freeway traffic as a PhD topic.
- Those small choices led him into control engineering and lifelong work on traffic control.
Wardrop Explains Network Equilibria
- Wardrop's user and system optima frame traffic assignment and explain why selfish routing differs from centrally optimal routing.
- These principles underpin most network routing and dynamic assignment research.
Two Modeling Traditions Converged
- Two historically parallel modeling streams emerged: urban signal/queue-based methods (UK) and PDE-based freeway models (LWR) from Lighthill, Whitham and Richards.
- Control theory entered freeway and urban domains slowly compared to modeling advances.
