Traffic management is one of the major factors in growth strategy formulation in urban centers across the globe. The increasing population and, therefore, the increase in the number of vehicles on roads in urban centers cause congested traffic patterns. These patterns typically emerge on intersections in busy city roads at various times during the day, especially during peak hours. A direct consequence of congestion is the increase in commute time and pollution. This paper presents a hierarchical graph-based congestion control (HGCC) method. Congestion values are set and evaluated as a two-level hierarchical graph. The least congestion path algorithm (LCP)is integrated with the HGCC to compute the optimal route between source and destination. The experimental results for a Manhattan-like grid network, together with the paired-sample t-test, show that the proposed method is efficient in achieving good congestion-avoiding routes.

Traffic Management System, smart city, Traffic congestion, Hierarchical graph, Least congestion path