Using Traffic Signal Control to Limit Speeding Opportunities on Bidirectional Urban Arterials

Abstract

Although controlling speed on urban arterials is important for safety, conventional traffic calming techniques cannot usually be applied on arterials, and many jurisdictions prohibit automated speed enforcement. Moreover, unlike unidirectional arterials, bidirectional arterials with short intersection spacing are not amenable to green waves that can remove the incentive to speed. This research explores the ways that traffic signal coordination creates – or limits – speeding opportunities on bidirectional arterials. Two measures of speeding opportunity are proposed: number of unconstrained vehicles, meaning vehicles arriving at a stopline on green and with no vehicle less than 5 s ahead of them, and number of speeders in a traffic microsimulation in which 20% of the vehicles have been assigned a desired speed in the “speeding” range. Theoretical analysis, confirmed by two case studies, show how speeding opportunities are related to degree of saturation, cycle length, specified progression speed (as in input to signal timing software), intersection spacing, and recall settings. The important role of clusters of intersections with near-simultaneous greens, a byproduct of bidirectional coordination with short intersection spacing, is examined. Clusters with many intersections are shown to create a strong speeding incentive, and cluster size can be reduced by lowering the cycle length and the progression speed. Case studies show it is sometimes possible to substantially reduce speeding opportunities with little or no increase in vehicular delay by lowering cycle length, lowering progression speed, dividing an arterial into smaller “coordination zones” with each zone having its own cycle length, and by abandoning coordination altogether.