Improved Strategies for Deploying Vehicle-Actuated Control at Isolated Signalized Intersections

This research has sought to demonstrate potential benefits from deploying enhanced vehicle actuation strategies at isolated signalized intersections. The work has exploited microscopic, stochastic simulation to evaluate impacts of enhanced vehicle-actuated (VA) control schemes for an array of operating conditions. Simulated outcomes (i.e. average vehicle delays) generated under the enhanced strategies were compared with outcomes resulting from more “conventional VA control policies. Findings from this work suggest that substantial delay reduction generally occurs by exploiting VA strategies which seek to 1) facilitate the use of the clearance interval by discharging vehicles, 2) shorten the duration of the required clearance interval by only serving, to the extent possible, queued vehicles and 3) evaluate gaps in individual traffic streams. The enhanced VA strategies described and tested in this research are inconsistent with conventional practice. Nonetheless, legally entitled to enter the intersection are always allocated clearance interval of sufficient duration.