A Two-Way Arterial Signal Coordination Method With Queueing Process Considered

Abstract

Arterial signal coordination based on a bandwidth criterion is one of the most effective and important signal coordination strategies for urban traffic signal control. In this paper, we propose a coordination methodology for arterial traffic signal control based on a novel two-way bandwidth maximization model. One of the important features of our method is that the queueing process has been considered. Different from most existing models in which the queue clearing time was neglected or artificially set by experienced engineers, the queue clearing time in our model is calculated based on the explicitly estimated queue length of each approach of the coordinated arterial road before the green light starts at each cycle. In addition, to achieve better coordination performance, not only the phases that provide right of way to coordinated directions but also the phases that provide the right of way to uncoordinated directions are considered during the optimization of phase sequences. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method are validated via simulations on VISSIM. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed method can efficiently reduce the average delay, the average queue length, and the average number of stops per vehicle on arterial roads while not impacting the overall performance of the road network.