Signal Timing Selection for Critical Intersections

In this paper, a systematic procedure is developed allowing determination of the optimal signal settings at isolated pretimed oversaturated intersections. The proposed methodology can be easily implemented in practice and requires only conventional traffic data such as demands, saturation flows, phasing arrangement, and the geometrics of the intersection. The measures of effectiveness for optimal operations include delay and queue length (storage) considerations. Simulation techniques were used to compare the proposed method with existing and conventional timing alternatives using data collected at an intersection located in a suburban environment in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It was found that the new methodology can result in substantial operational improvements over the conventional schemes tested.