Progression Through a Series of Intersections with Traffic Actuated Controllers. Volume 1: Technical Report. Final Report

Many traffic control systems on urban arterials and grid networks include signals with actuated controllers. However, commonly used computer programs for signal timing cannot directly optimize the timing of coordinated signals. Users have to apply techniques designed for pretimed signals, and then "translate" the optimized pretimed settings into settings for the actuated controllers.  In addition, other signal control choices, such as whether to operate a particular signal as pretimed, semi-actuated, or fully actuated, are left entirely to the user.  This report describes the development of procedures for applying the MAXBAND, PASSER and TRANSYT-7F timing programs to systems with actuated controllers.  The results from the testing of the procedures on 14 representative grid systems and arterials with the NETSIM simulation model are presented. The report also describes the development and testing of criteria for selecting the type of signal control at specific intersections for commonly occurring field conditions.  The report is the first volume produced in this study.  Volume 2 is the User's Guide for implementation of the research findings.