TGDT: A Temporal Graph-based Digital Twin for Urban Traffic Corridors

Abstract: Urban congestion at signalized intersections leads to significant delays, economic losses, and increased emissions. Existing deep learning models often lack spatial generalizability, rely on complex architectures, and struggle with real-time deployment. To address these limitations, we propose the Temporal Graph-based Digital Twin (TGDT), a scalable framework that integrates Temporal Convolutional Networks and Attentional Graph Neural Networks for dynamic, direction-aware traffic modeling and assessment at urban corridors. TGDT estimates key Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs) for traffic flow optimization at both the intersection level (e.g., queue length, waiting time) and the corridor level (e.g., traffic volume, travel time). Its modular architecture and sequential optimization scheme enable easy extension to any number of intersections and MOEs. The model outperforms state-of-the-art baselines by accurately producing high-dimensional, concurrent multi-output estimates. It also demonstrates high robustness and accuracy across diverse traffic conditions, including extreme scenarios, while relying on only a minimal set of traffic features. Fully parallelized, TGDT can simulate over a thousand scenarios within a matter of seconds, offering a cost-effective, interpretable, and real-time solution for urban traffic management and optimization.