An Adaptive Machine Learning Approach to Sustainable Traffic Planning: High-Fidelity Pattern Recognition in Smart Transportation Systems

Effective and sustainable planning for future smart transportation systems is hindered by outdated traffic management models that fail to capture real-world dynamics, leading to congestion and significant environmental impact. To address this, advanced machine learning models are required to provide high-fidelity insights into urban mobility. In this work, we propose an adaptive machine learning approach to traffic pattern recognition that synergizes the HDBSCAN and k-means clustering algorithms. By employing a data-driven weighted voting mechanism, our solution provides a robust analytical foundation for sustainable planning, integrating structural analysis with precise cluster refinement. The crafted model was validated using a high-fidelity simulation of the Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, transport network, where it demonstrated a superior ability to identify distinct traffic modes, achieving a V-measure of 0.79–0.82 and improving cluster compactness by 10–14% over standalone algorithms. It also attained a scenario identification accuracy of 92.8–95.0% with a temporal coherence of 0.94. These findings confirm that our adaptive approach is a foundational technology for intelligent transport systems, enabling the planning and deployment of more responsive, efficient, and sustainable urban mobility solutions.