Signal Phase Timing Impact on Traffic Delay and Queue Length-a Intersection Case Study

Traditional intersection traffic signal control strategy is pre-determined signal with certain phase timing length for each circle. Studies focusing on adaptive traffic signal strategy have somewhat achieved the goal of reducing traffic system delay to some extent. However, few of them capture the benefit of using the queue length as the criteria under the connected vehicle environment, and this paper focuses on firstly identifying the potential saving of average system delay with agent-based simulation modeling, and sec-ondly finding out the relationship between average system delay and average queue length for traffic ap-proaching the signalized intersections. Through applying the agent-based simulation modeling approach in AnyLogic, findings show that average system delay could be reduced using optimized parameters (e.g. arrival rate, signal phase length, etc.), specifically, 5.29% saving of total average system time, 4%-28% traffic queue reduction for different traffic lanes, and a positive relationship between average system de-lay and the average traffic queue length is detected.

Current situation of the traffic control strategies at the intersection has evolved and been improved through applying the advanced control technologies during the last decades, especially for signalized in-tersections around urban areas. Under the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connection environment, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth analysis about how these techniques could be applied to improve the overall efficiency and safety conditions at intersections. This study is intended to present an in-depth analysis about how to use the information from the connected vehicles to simulate the real world situation, so that an optimal traffic signal control solution can be achieved at intersections. Therfore, the research question raised in this study is whether it is more efficent to cross the intersections under connected vehicle (CV) environment in terms of system delay and traffic queue length.

Traffic flow simulation model

Traffic flow simulation logic and signal control scheme

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