Gate Control Improves Routing Efficiency for Periodic Traffic
Abstract
Traffic movement on highways and data packet transmission across the Internet serve as prototypical examples of collective dynamical behavior in complex systems. Although enhancing traffic flow in complex networks has been extensively investigated, most existing studies focus on single-queue models. In this paper, we introduce a simple yet effective two-queue scheme with gate control that regulates vehicle entry and integrates it with the routing protocol. When vehicles arrive at a on-ramp gate, they first join a waiting queue and are permitted to enter the main flowing queue once it has emptied. This two-queue strategy is especially advantageous when highway inflow varies periodically with large fluctuations, as is commonly observed in real traffic. Moreover, it modifies the system's failure characteristics, replacing sudden, discontinuous jamming transitions with gradual, continuous ones. The approach is based on a simple rule using only local queue information, making it easy to implement and widely applicable. Beyond the specific setup studied here, it can be applied to other transportation networks under different conditions or extended to other queuing systems, such as Internet data packet routing.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{song2026gate,
title = {{Gate Control Improves Routing Efficiency for Periodic Traffic}},
author = {Hyunwook Song and Hoyun Choi and B. Kahng},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.01534},
eprint = {2610.01534},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01534},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Gate Control Improves Routing Efficiency for Periodic Traffic
AU - Hyunwook Song
AU - Hoyun Choi
AU - B. Kahng
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.01534
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01534
AB - Traffic movement on highways and data packet transmission across the Internet serve as prototypical examples of collective dynamical behavior in complex systems. Although enhancing traffic flow in complex networks has been extensively investigated, most existing studies focus on single-queue models. In this paper, we introduce a simple yet effective two-queue scheme with gate control that regulates vehicle entry and integrates it with the routing protocol. When vehicles arrive at a on-ramp gate, they first join a waiting queue and are permitted to enter the main flowing queue once it has emptied. This two-queue strategy is especially advantageous when highway inflow varies periodically with large fluctuations, as is commonly observed in real traffic. Moreover, it modifies the system's failure characteristics, replacing sudden, discontinuous jamming transitions with gradual, continuous ones. The approach is based on a simple rule using only local queue information, making it easy to implement and widely applicable. Beyond the specific setup studied here, it can be applied to other transportation networks under different conditions or extended to other queuing systems, such as Internet data packet routing.
ER -