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Preference-Conditioned Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Runtime-Tunable Transit Signal Priority

Summary

A new reinforcement learning controller for transit signal priority allows runtime tuning of the trade-off between bus priority and overall traffic delay via a preference parameter. The single learned policy outperforms fixed-time and rule-based baselines while maintaining constraint feasibility.

SourcearXiv Machine LearningAuthor: Philip-Roman Adam, Stefanie Schmidtner
Preference-Conditioned Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Runtime-Tunable Transit Signal Priority
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[Submitted on 30 Jun 2026]

Title:Preference-Conditioned Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Runtime-Tunable Transit Signal Priority

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Abstract:Transit signal priority (TSP) requires balancing competing objectives: reducing bus delay while limiting adverse impacts on non-bus traffic and avoiding extreme waits for a subset of vehicles. Existing reinforcement-learning (RL) approaches to TSP typically encode transit-aware features (e.g., occupancy and schedule deviation) but optimize a fixed reward or fixed scalarization, which limits operational flexibility when agency priorities change across time-of-day or disruption conditions. We present a preference-conditioned TSP controller, $\pi(a \mid s,w)$, that selects the next signal phase under minimum/maximum green and transition-feasibility constraints and can be tuned at runtime via a preference parameter $w$ to trade off bus-priority emphasis against overall traffic delay without retraining. We implement this on top of IntersectionZoo by introducing a constrained signal-control/TSP wrapper, and we extend scenario generation with bus-prevalence augmentation and timetable-based bus insertion to address sparse transit-priority events during training. Experiments against fixed-time control, a rule-based TSP overlay, and fixed-weight PPO specialists show that a single learned conditioned policy spans a smooth empirical trade-off frontier across runtime preferences, outperforms fixed-time and rule-based baselines, and maintains constraint feasibility, while tail-delay diagnostics reveal that non-bus externalities remain limited for moderate preference settings but can increase substantially under high bus-priority weights. The source code of this work is available at this https URL.

Comments: 8 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables. Accepted at the 29th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2026). Code: this https URL

Subjects:

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Systems and Control (eess.SY)

ACM classes: I.2.6; I.2.8

Cite as: arXiv:2607.18286 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2607.18286v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.18286

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Submission history

From: Philip-Roman Adam [view email] [v1] Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:57:39 UTC (61 KB)

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Key points

  • Introduces a preference-conditioned RL controller that can be tuned at runtime without retraining.
  • Built on IntersectionZoo with constrained signal control/TSP wrapper and bus prevalence augmentation.
  • Single policy spans a smooth trade-off frontier and outperforms fixed-time and rule-based baselines.
  • Tail-delay analysis shows limited non-bus externalities at moderate settings but increases under high bus priority.

Highlights and analysis are generated automatically and may contain errors. Check the original source.