ASCE has honored Michael W. Levin, Ph.D., Aff.M.ASCE, with the 2025 Alfred Noble Prize for the paper “Max-Pressure Traffic Signal Timing: A Summary of Methodological and Experimental Results,” Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems, January 2023.
Traffic signal timing is a classic topic for transportation engineering. Good signal timing can reduce idling time, improve throughput, reduce vehicle emissions, and improve safety for bicycles and pedestrians. It should also help reduce unwanted driver behavior such as red-light running. Good signal timing has been shown to be a very cost-effective investment. However, much of the software and approaches for signal timing are decades old. Improvements in sensing, in methodology, and in systemwide approaches are needed.
This paper summarizes experience with a new approach for traffic signal timing called max pressure. The approach is stable (to avoid undesirable dynamics), adaptive, and decentralized. The approach can also be extended to consider automated and connected vehicles. The paper summarizes the method, reviews traffic simulation results, and reports on existing real-intersection experiments to provide a comprehensive review. So far, these assessment results look very promising. While this review paper cites results from a large number of researchers around the world, it is important to note that 13 technical papers by Levin on the method are cited in the paper. These are only a small fraction of the 112 technical papers provided so far in his career. In addition to providing a state-of-the-art review for the community, Levin, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, has been a major contributor to the development of the methodology. The method should find a place in the transportation engineering toolkit as experience accumulates. A state-of-the-art review paper such as this can accelerate its adoption. In even a single year, the paper has accumulated 500 downloads and four citations.
The Alfred Noble Prize recognizes a technical paper of exceptional merit accepted by the Committee on Publications of ASCE, AIME, ASME, IEEE, or WSE.
