Development and assessment of trajectory-based arterial through percent arrivals on red for arterial signal coordination performance evaluation

Abstract

Efficient traffic signal system management plays a pivotal role in reducing traffic congestion and improving traffic mobility on urban roads. The applications of the Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPM) revolutionize the way of proactively managing and evaluating traffic signal systems through a suite of performance measures. The Percent Arrivals on Red (PAoR) is one of the commonly used progression performance measures in the ATSPM to characterize vehicle arrivals at the intersection. However, the accuracy of PAoR to assess arterial signal coordination is restricted by configuration limitations of advance detectors and remains to be further explored. To address this problem, this research proposes an easy-to-use trajectory-based performance measure, Arterial Through Percent Arrivals on Red (ATPAoR), for arterial signal coordination performance evaluation and presents the general procedures to calculate ATPAoR from connected vehicle data. A case study is carried out to implement the proposed ATPAoR and investigate the relationship between the ATPAoR and the PAoR. It is found that the combination of the time–space diagram (TSD) and arterial through-vehicle trajectories is effective in the actual arterial signal coordination performance visualization, ATPAoR result interpretation, and potential timing improvement recommendations. The PAoR is found to be greater than the ATPAoR in undersaturated conditions, and the PAoR above 60% is recommended to identify poor arterial signal coordination design. The historical TSD can be utilized to verify the accuracy of the PAoR to evaluate the actual arterial signal coordination when vehicle trajectory data is unavailable.